Complete thesis - Murdoch University

for Engineering degrees suggests an emphasis on soft skills within the learning environment.As Bentley et al (1999) suggest (discussed in Chapter 2), these are sometimes given only‘lip service’ in tertiary education curricula for IS. Of course the issue of students with thepotential for RE competence enrolling in Engineering programmes is a moot point, and alsodeserving of investigation.9.4.3 Implications for Engineering educationThroughout this study, the Engineering context has been acknowledged. Therefore, theimplications for Engineering education, although not the prime focus od this work can alsobe stated.Within Engineering education, findings from research into learning have strategic implications:in terms of ensuring academic success, in the favouring of students with particularlearning and personality styles and with the development of lifelong learning skills in thosestudents so that professionally they can adapt to the changing contexts they will encounterprofessionally.Academic successAcademic success may be measured by the rate of graduation and eventual practice as aprofessional within the discipline of graduation. Attrition, both from the curriculum andfrom the profession indicate some complex lack of matching between the individual (student)and the discipline chosen. Two studies (of over 25 000 students in over 300 institutions inthe US (Astin, 1993; Moller-Wong and Eide, 1997)) indicate that in Engineering less than50% of first-year Engineering students eventually graduate in the discipline.Other studies indicate this attrition is not based on academic ability to cope with Engineering,but rather involves a complex set of factors including students’ attitudes toward Engineering,their self-confidence levels, and the quality of their interactions with instructors and peers(Astin, 1993) along with their aptitude for Engineering. In turn, students’ attitudes towardEngineering and confidence levels are strongly related to their classroom experience, withEngineering students highly dissatisfied with the quality of instruction they receive, comparedto students in other disciplines (Astin, 1993).Additional research findings (UWA, 1996; Felder, 1996) indicate that Engineering students’motivation and success can be adversely affected if their learning styles, and the learningstyles of the staff teaching them, are not taken into account: there is considerable evidencethat a mismatch between lecturers’ expectations of the way students learn and students’ own411