Gabrielle Nudelman

This qualitative case study of a course pairing offered to final-year electrical engineering students at the University of Cape Town in 2015 was undertaken in order to better understand the ways in which participation in undergraduate courses can prepare engineering students for the workplace. The course pairing consisted of New Venture Planning and Professional Communication Studies. While the former aimed to expose students to the knowledge relating to starting a new business, the latter focused on teaching students how to create written and oral texts to support such an endeavour. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as a theoretical underlabourer, the study develops understandings regarding the generative mechanisms at work during the two courses. In support of this, the study posits an understanding of employability that moves beyond the acquisition of discrete workplace skills. Rather, employability is conceptualised as discursive transformation, with students being deemed “work-ready” when they develop discursive identities as engineers. Data generation took place by means of focus group and individual interviews, ethnographic observation and documentary research. Margaret Archer’s social realist tools – in particular, analytical dualism and the morphogenetic framework were used to trace the students’ transformations over the course pairing. It was argued that those students who developed discursive identities of engineers were those who, in Archer’s terms, emerged as social actors at the end of the course pairing. Two characteristics of the courses were found to enable this transformation: those parts that promoted deepened understanding of what the role of “engineer” entailed and the parts that provided spaces for students to develop their own personal identities. The findings of the study indicated that discursive identities as engineers were more likely to be developed through the group work and spaces for reflection engendered by the courses than as a result of the formal curriculum. The implications of the research are that, while a focus on employability in engineering education is valid and productive, this needs to be supported by opportunities for authentic learning experiences which afford students the opportunity to engage in learning that promotes real-life application of knowledge.

Teamwork is a fundamental employability skill and, as such, is fostered in professional programmes. This study presents a comparative analysis of higher education students' perceptions, development, and experiences of teamwork at two universities: one in South Africa and the other in Spain. These study sites provided a fruitful opportunity for comparison, given their contextual similarities. Through a survey of 395 3rd and 4th-year students of professional degrees, the authors explored how these students developed the teamwork skills required within their curricula. The findings showed that respondents from both institutions perceive teamwork similarly, but there are significant differences in how these skills are developed. While most South African respondents had participated in courses focused on team functioning, the Spanish had learnt to function in teams during project work. Furthermore, the South African sample was more aware of the impact of socio-cultural factors on tea...

Teamwork is a fundamental employability skill and, as such, is fostered in professional programmes. This study presents a comparative analysis of higher education students' perceptions, development, and experiences of teamwork at two universities: one in South Africa and the other in Spain. These study sites provided a fruitful opportunity for comparison, given their contextual similarities. Through a survey of 395 3rd and 4th-year students of professional degrees, the authors explored how these students developed the teamwork skills required within their curricula. The findings showed that respondents from both institutions perceive teamwork similarly, but there are significant differences in how these skills are developed. While most South African respondents had participated in courses focused on team functioning, the Spanish had learnt to function in teams during project work. Furthermore, the South African sample was more aware of the impact of socio-cultural factors on team functioning than the Spanish one. The former reported feeling marginalised due to their race, gender and language to a greater extent than the Spanish. The paper outlines the potential benefits of successful teamwork, such as improving social cohesion. The results could be useful to policymakers and lecturers designing context-specific interventions to develop students' teamwork skills.

Abstract The Professional Communication Studies (PCS) department at the University of Cape Town offers courses at senior undergraduate and postgraduate level. This study evaluates new developments since 2011 of the language development support classes, which are offered to linguistically weak students. The content and structure of the classes is considered in light of current theoretical debates as to the value of explicit teaching of grammar in the context of non-technical generic competencies for engineers. A pilot study of the programme over two years encompassed four modules attended by a total of 62 participants, comprising students from the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment. Results were positive. The majority of students (above 70%) strongly agreed that the intervention had aided them, with no students giving a negative response. Open-ended questions elicited the areas of tuition most needed: weaknesses in sentence structure, verb-noun concord, use of conjunctions and punctuation. Conclusions, supported by literature, are that as a supplement to formal classes, a language enrichment module is effective in improving students’ English written communication, that it supports other interventions and that the module be expanded.

ABSTRACT An initial qualitative investigation was undertaken to determine the parameters defining professional written and spoken communication in industry, professional engineering and built environment bodies and other potential employers of graduates from the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment. The study questioned whether these parameters are met by the current courses offered by Professional Communication Studies (PCS) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). PCS aims to equip all students graduating from the faculty with communication skills to meet the demands their future careers will make on their ability to write and present technical data. Research into curricula for Professional Communication is founded in current casework. All courses combine established theory with case studies and examples to provide a realistic context for participants to practise their skills.A sample of interviewees was drawn from the professional accreditation boards, for example, the Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA), the South African Council for the Quantity Surveying Profession (SACQSP), allied professional bodies, industry stakeholders and potential employers. Comments from respondents were related to the PCS course and an assessment made of its relevance compared with the stated needs. It was concluded that technical professionals write extensively, often present complex data to varied audiences, and that communication skills taught in the PCS course are relevant.

Professional identity development (PID) is a growing focus for higher education researchers interested in graduate employability and workplace readiness. This raises the challenge of how to trace students’ identity shifts. This paper shows how Margaret Archer’s agential morphogenesis can be used to generate understandings of how students’ identities change during professional degree programmes. Archer’s theories of double and triple morphogenesis are applied to data collected through interviews and documentary research. The findings are presented as narratives about two final-year electrical engineering students who participated in employability-development focussed courses at a South African university. These narratives offer in-depth descriptions of the students’ identity shifts as they neared completion of their studies. The richness of the findings, which incorporate the constraints and enablements of the students’ professional identity development, leads to the paper’s argument...

This paper describes the initial findings of a pilot study into how engineering students at the University of Cape Town experience inclusivity when working in teams. Both in South Africa and abroad, competency in teamwork is a key requirement for professional accreditation and workplace performance. A survey was disseminated to a cohort of third-year mechanical engineering students to generate understandings around their experiences of teamwork. Initial findings show that, while the students view teamwork as necessary, they receive little focused teaching input into how best to work together. Also, more than a third of the students reported having felt marginalized when working in teams, either because of insufficient understanding of the engineering material or for social factors such as race, gender or language. The next stage of the project will involve a larger, cross-disciplinary sample of engineering students at the University of Cape Town. In addition, future stages include c...

This qualitative case study of a course pairing offered to final-year electrical engineering students at the University of Cape Town in 2015 was undertaken in order to better understand the ways in which participation in undergraduate courses can prepare engineering students for the workplace. The course pairing consisted of New Venture Planning and Professional Communication Studies. While the former aimed to expose students to the knowledge relating to starting a new business, the latter focused on teaching students how to create written and oral texts to support such an endeavour. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as a theoretical underlabourer, the study develops understandings regarding the generative mechanisms at work during the two courses. In support of this, the study posits an understanding of employability that moves beyond the acquisition of discrete workplace skills. Rather, employability is conceptualised as discursive transformation, with students being deemed “work-ready” when they develop discursive identities as engineers. Data generation took place by means of focus group and individual interviews, ethnographic observation and documentary research. Margaret Archer’s social realist tools – in particular, analytical dualism and the morphogenetic framework were used to trace the students’ transformations over the course pairing. It was argued that those students who developed discursive identities of engineers were those who, in Archer’s terms, emerged as social actors at the end of the course pairing. Two characteristics of the courses were found to enable this transformation: those parts that promoted deepened understanding of what the role of “engineer” entailed and the parts that provided spaces for students to develop their own personal identities. The findings of the study indicated that discursive identities as engineers were more likely to be developed through the group work and spaces for reflection engendered by the courses than as a result of the formal curriculum. The implications of the research are that, while a focus on employability in engineering education is valid and productive, this needs to be supported by opportunities for authentic learning experiences which afford students the opportunity to engage in learning that promotes real-life application of knowledge.

ABSTRACT Employability development is a focus of contemporary engineering education, both abroad and in South Africa, from where this study emanates. However, pedagogic initiatives in service of this goal may fail to take into consideration the ideological underpinnings of this emphasis on employability, as well as of the curricula developed in its service. This study utilises discourse analysis as a tool to analyse texts relating to a final-year course pairing offered to electrical engineering students, which explicitly aims to develop employability skills. Drawing on Fairclough’s three-dimensional conception of discourse, the texts, which include faculty handbook extracts, course handouts, timetables, and additional teaching materials, provide insight into the ideological underpinnings of the courses as well as the context of their creation. The findings of the study reveal the neoliberal foundation of the course-pairing in general and, more specifically, three discourses that interact throughout the courses: the ‘entrepreneur of self’ discourse, the discourse of ‘inevitability’ and the ‘one-size-fits-all’ discourse. The study concludes by suggesting that perpetuating these discourses will lead to replication within the engineering industry, as opposed to transformation and innovation.

Developing students’ engineering identity during higher education is a
way to encourage perseverance as well as identification with the engineering role after graduation. This study explores the constraints and enablements to the development of engineering identities experienced by a group of final-year electrical engineering students during their studies. Drawing on data generated
from focus group and individual interviews, the study utilises Margaret Archer’s
social realist concept of triple morphogenesis as an analytical framework. The findings show that engineering identity development was enabled by the aspects of the programme that encouraged personal development and by exposure to a range of different engineering-related careers. Constraints included conventional top-down pedagogy and assessment and a lack of focus on the creation of authentic texts. The recommendation is for engineering programmes to prioritise holistic growth and explicitly focus on engineering identity in their curricula.

South African engineering and built environment professionals often present and need to transfer complex data to diverse recipients. This study of 91 respondents (via a Likert scale survey) explores communicative skills and formats used in their workplaces. Skills for seeking work (curriculum vitae, letters of application. networking through social media and interviews) was followed by analysis of technical writing to gain and keep work (proposals, reports and correspondence). Finally, the showcasing of work was reviewed via audience analysis, presentations and graphics, technical presentations, verbal and non-verbal delivery, visual literacy formats, integration of PowerPoint and posters. Conclusions were that the importance of the activity does not always align with the attention the practitioner gives it, nor the standard of output achieved. This disparity occurred particularly with citation and referencing, digital and traditional CVs, writing up proposals and responding to tender requests, and in creating and integrating visual material. However, there was alignment in the attention to and importance and standard of interviews, reports and summaries. It appears that emphasis must be on giving attention to the areas of communication which are deemed to be important but which currently are not of a high standard.

This study aims to identify how final-year electrical engineering students at a South African university understand engineering professionalism. In doing so, it adopts a discourse perspective, with particular emphasis on discourse’s dialectical relationship with society, which sees discourse both reflecting and shaping society. Using the concept of engineering professionalism as discourse provides a way to analyse both the current state of the industry (including its history to date) and how the industry may change going forward. As soon-to-be professionals, engineering students are the agents who will shape the industry and understanding their perceptions provides a key for what to expect in the future. For the purposes of this qualitative study, semi-structured focus group interviews were held with twenty students. Findings include: an emphasis on the importance of transferable skills for professionalism; an acknowledgement of the professional engineer’s power to make societal changes and the concomitant responsibility that this entails; and a tension between fitting into the discourse of professionalism and pushing back against it. Within an engineering education context, the study’s findings can be used to develop targeted, impactful learning interventions that encourage critical reflection on and ownership of the discourse of “engineering professionalism”.

Current research points to an increase in the inclusion of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in higher education contexts. This study considers the e-portfolios created by a cohort of final-year electrical engineering students at a South African university. With an understanding of the homepage text as discourse, the study seeks to investigate how students identify as professional engineers. Qualitative analysis of the homepage text of the students' sites indicate that the students see themselves as technological innovators, all-rounders and leaders who are driven by passion to reach their goals and positively impact the world. The conclusions that can be drawn are that the students' identities as engineers are purposeful, multifaceted and evolving in relation to the changing nature of industry, and that they reflect the students' employability.

The aim of this paper is to reconceptualise the development of employability skills in electrical engineering students from the University of Cape Town (UCT), using two courses that are run in tandem as a case study. The first course, New Venture Planning (NVP) is a semester-long fourth year course during which groups of students develop and work on a hypothetical engineering-related entrepreneurial idea. The second course is Professional Communication Studies (PCS), during which students produce texts related to their NVP project, for example a summary of a business plan, a poster to investors and a group presentation to potential funders. The study uses Gee’s (1996) notion of discourse as a tool to move beyond the traditional notion of skills development as embodied by the “transfer metaphor”, whereby skills developed in higher education are transferred wholly and neatly once students enter the workplace. This is done by assessing whether and how students employ engineering discourse during their studies, thereby developing understanding around how prepared they are for the workplace. The data for the study was collected via focus group interviews with students. The findings show that students participating in the NVP and PCS course coupling are constrained in their practice of engineering discourse by the focus on academic demands, lack of knowledge about the workplace and the heavy weighting throughout the degree programme on theory. However, their identities have transformed through the development of personal resources in response to academic challenges, the focus on group work and the status that they perceive arises from being a UCT graduate, all of which do contribute to their level of preparedness for the workplace.

This qualitative case study of a course pairing offered to final-year electrical engineering students at the University of Cape Town in 2015 was undertaken in order to better understand the ways in which participation in undergraduate courses can prepare engineering students for the workplace. The course pairing consisted of New Venture Planning and Professional Communication Studies. While the former aimed to expose students to the knowledge relating to starting a new business, the latter focused on teaching students how to create written and oral texts to support such an endeavour. Using Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism as a theoretical underlabourer, the study develops understandings regarding the generative mechanisms at work during the two courses. In support of this, the study posits an understanding of employability that moves beyond the acquisition of discrete workplace skills. Rather, employability is conceptualised as discursive transformation, with students being deemed “work-ready” when they develop discursive identities as engineers. Data generation took place by means of focus group and individual interviews, ethnographic observation and documentary research. Margaret Archer’s social realist tools – in particular, analytical dualism and the morphogenetic framework were used to trace the students’ transformations over the course pairing. It was argued that those students who developed discursive identities of engineers were those who, in Archer’s terms, emerged as social actors at the end of the course pairing. Two characteristics of the courses were found to enable this transformation: those parts that promoted deepened understanding of what the role of “engineer” entailed and the parts that provided spaces for students to develop their own personal identities. The findings of the study indicated that discursive identities as engineers were more likely to be developed through the group work and spaces for reflection engendered by the courses than as a result of the formal curriculum. The implications of the research are that, while a focus on employability in engineering education is valid and productive, this needs to be supported by opportunities for authentic learning experiences which afford students the opportunity to engage in learning that promotes real-life application of knowledge.