Complete thesis - Murdoch University

comment from the accreditation panel. Their final report (Bradley, 2004) suggested thiscould become the leading programme in this country, albeit with some resistance to changelikely, and requested a formal report on Design Studios within Engineering by the end of2006.Another limitation of this study is the focus on participant students only during their studies.Within the SE programme, additional research has been undertaken to evaluate student abilityto transfer the skills and competencies gained to subsequent units and to the workplacelearning environment (in the context of an internship). While the majority of that work isnot discussed here, preliminary results, and in particular employer reaction within the ITdiscipline are encouraging. Student engagement with subsequent Design Studio (ENG302specifically, in this context) is reported briefly (see Section 8.3). More interestingly, as studentsrotated into the role of Project Manager, they (individually) applied what they hadpreviously learnt with regards to learning strategies and approaches to study in order tomotivate their group members. This is a pleasing outcome and hints at the catalytic natureof this study.However, further research is requires to test these findings in the context of their transitionto the workplace. At this time, reporting is only anecdotal – as an example of positiveemployer reaction, a global software development organisation with a workforce of over 30000 accepted a lone SE intern in 2003. In 2004 this was doubled to two students - in 2005the request was for ten students who had participated in Studio Learning in SE. Again in2006 the organisation was willing to offer all SE students an internship. More revealing, thisdemand was not matched at other universities in the state offering Engineering programmesfor software. A further indication of employer satisfaction is provided by graduate careerprospects. While empirical evidence is in the process of being accumulated - there are stilltoo few SE graduates to provide statistically significant results, that anecdotal evidence isalso encouraging. Where one (20%) 2004 graduate Software Engineer was employed by thesame global software development organisation, of the 2005 cohort 50% (six graduates) arenow employed there. Both 2006 graduates (100%) are also with the same organisation, whilesome of the 2007 cohort (currently undertaking internships within the organisation) have alsobeen offered employment.Methodological limitations must also be acknowledged. As has been noted, and in the contextof the Action Research itself being a learning exercise, data collection at the commencementof the study lacked sophistication – a particular issue was providing a mechanism to capturestudent perception of the learning environment as they were experiencing it (or reasonablesoon afterwards). Only snapshots, albeit quite crude, were available through responses to406