Rationale
This case study concerns the employment of a coursework assessment constituting a 35% 40% weighting of a 3rd year 10 credit module (CL305 Construction Project Management). This was an ‘assessment for learning’ (AfL) to support and promote learning (see McDowell, 2014). The coursework required the students to engage in active learning through considering their Personal Development Planning (PDP) and how this links to their ongoing Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and the Initial Professional Development (IPD) that they will undertake on graduating into an engineering organisation.
...
The main objectives in establishing the mentoring initiative was to expose the students to real time civil engineering in practice in order to provide a context for students’ ongoing learning and development. Fundamental to this was their exposure to real projects and multidisciplinary teams.
Successes
The results show that the student mentees overwhelmingly support and validate the opportunities that this initiative has provided. On completion of their mentoring meetings, and on return to their fourth year of their studies, the majority of the students commit to making behavioural and attitudinal changes regarding their own continued professional development (CPD).
A taster of the results are shown. A more expansive set of results are available in the published paper (link belowlinked to below (Murray et al, 2015).
- The mentoring experience has been one of the best schemes I have taken part in at university. It helped establish where I was in relation to my current career path, and helped further my understanding of a career in civil engineering (3rd year mentee).
- I believe that this mentoring program has been a significant benefit to my knowledge and understanding of the world of construction. It has given me confidence that I have made the right career choice, and has given me enthusiasm and renewed energy in studying at University (3rd year mentee).
-282 534 (82%86%) students either agreed/strongly agreed that the mentoring experience had helped confirm their intentions to embark on a career in civil engineering after graduating.
-304 540 (88%87%) students either agreed or strongly agreed that they would pursue their own CPD on return to fourth-year studies.
Lessons Learnt
Building Building a formal mentoring initiative into a a 3rd year module with each mentee submitting a refelctive reflective report on their exeperince experience appears to work where it is ‘credit bearing’.
...
Securing departmental cooperation from colleagues to build the reflective report into a robust robust and holistic PDP system would be best and this . This would also ensure that the students students have a longitudinal framework to enable them to become refelctive reflective practitioners from year 1 to graduation.
The mentees need to be reminded on several occasions that this is their opportunity to show their inititaive initiative and curiosity to potential employers (summer placememnt placement & graduate). Not all studenst students are sufficently sufficiently mature or confident / motivated to assume responsibility for their own learning so working on these attributes pre-mentoring woud would prove beneficalbeneficial.
Challenges
Health &Safety - whilst at the mentors' work location the mentors mentees are treated as vistors visitors and covered by the employers' corporate insurance. Travel to and from the mentors work location is made by public transport and / or the mentees vehicles, all at the students' expense. The students are briefed on car sharing and a need to be safe motorists while conveying peer students in their vehicles. Given the number number of journey itereations iterations for all students, it makes individual risk assessments impossible.
Occasional problems with mentors being unavailable for meetings and / or cancelling last minute due to work commitmmentscommitments.
Ensuring that all students developed a professional approach when in the company of industry and acted as ambassadors of the university. This was fine albeit some mentors suggested that their mentees were not sufficently curious not sufficiently curious and did not ask many questions.
Scalability
Whilts Whilst an ideal mentor-mentee ratio would be 1-1 the class size each year (average n=80) prevents this. Groups of mentees (n=43-5 per group) make it possible to secure around 20-22 mentors from local industry.
This session (2014-2015) it was noticeable that where more than one group of mentees were visiting the same company, the mentors would often double up the groups. As to be expected, mentees expressed concern about this issue and had a prefernce for the smaller group ratio that provided a more personal contact with their individual mentors.To prevent this happening in the 2015-16 session I will only send one group of mentess per company. Should the company provide more than one mentor then this will allow for breaking the group up and the mentees exposure to multiple engineers, perhaps from different disciplines.
Suggestions for Transferability
The emloyment employment of gradutes graduates (often Alumni) to act act as mentors to UG/PG student mentees is now quite common throughout higher education. This approach is particulary particularly suitable for courses leading to a professional qualification and where the graduate mentors receive formal aknoledgement toweards acknowledgement towards becoming cgartred chartered engineers / accountants etc.
E-mentoring is also growing in poularity popularity and this removes some of the logistical and financial (time) barriers that could prevent face-to-face contact between the mentors & mentees.
...
References
Kolb DA (1984) Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA.
McDowell L (2014) Assessment for Learning, Chapter 6, In: Lynn Clouder, Christine Broughan, Steve Jewell and Graham Steventon (Edits) Improving student engagement and development through assessment, Special Indian Edition, India, Routledge, India, pp73-85
Murray M,Ross A, Blaney, N and Adamson, L (2015)Mentoring Undergraduate Civil Engineering Students, . Proceedings of the ICE-Management, Procurement & Law, (Accepted May 2015, In Press).168(4): 189–198. Available @ https://pure.strath.ac.uk/portal/files/43529494/Murray_etal_ICE_MPL_Mentoring_undergraduate_civil_engineering.pdf
| Attachments |
|---|