ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA | OCTOBER 2015 71

EDUCATION

Professor Guy Littlefair is the Dean of Engineering at Deakin University in Victoria.

HEADING

What’s the best way to create a learning environment to benefit engineering students?When I look at engineering programs in Australia

and compare them to other areas of the world, I

am struck by the fact that so many of our courses

are aligned more to the sciences than they are to

the design disciplines. The primary function of an

engineer is to design and innovate.

It’s really important that we align our teaching,

our undergraduate and post graduate teaching

much more towards the design disciplines than

to the science disciplines. The approach we

have taken at Deakin is to come up with a new

Bring design into engineering EDUCATIONGeneral Chair of the 2015 Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AAEE) Conference, Professor Guy Littlefair talks to Kevin Gomez about the challenges facing engineering education today.

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ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA | OCTOBER 2015 73

EDUCATION

curriculum framework. This is a design-based

framework, where students, right from day one of

their program, have the opportunity to get involved

in collaborative industry-focused projects.

The curriculum is supported by the

underpinning of science and maths. I am not

getting away from that being a really important

feature. The primary focus is on the design projects

and how the design projects can be supported by

the maths and the sciences.

How can we better engage engineering students and reduce dropout rates?When I look at the more traditional engineering

programs, I see a curriculum which has very little to

do with engineering in the first two years.

If I was an 18-year-old thinking about becoming

an engineer and wanted to go to university, I would

expect to be dealing with engineering problems

right from the very beginning.

If we have an education program and an

environment which really grasps the student,

makes their learning exciting and relevant, then we

are going to see much lower attrition rates in the

future and many more successful graduates going

into the industry.

What do you aim to get out of the AAEE conference?I would really like to redefine engineering

education. Let’s draw a line under the past and

focus on the future. How are we going to educate

our students?

How are we going to make sure that when our

students graduate, they’re ready for industry?

How can we engage with industry all the way

through our programs to make sure the product the

universities produce is going to be of use?

If we can achieve a very forward-looking

universal view of what engineering education is

going to look like, then we will have achieved an

awful lot from the conference.

What kind of support will you need from government or other institutions to make that a reality?Governments of both sides talk about the

importance of engineering, the importance of

innovation and the importance of providing a

scaffold to make sure that Australia can be an

innovative economy, an economy that’s built on

smart technologies.

To do that, having an independent advocate,

similar to the chief scientist, who can talk about the

big challenges facing Australia around engineering,

around infrastructure, around manufacturing, will

actually make a difference.

I think that the science community in Australia

has been very successful in becoming very

visible. I think society at large understands the

importance of science. I don’t see society at large

understanding the importance and the relevance of

the engineering profession.

What can be done to address the declining number of students taking science and maths in high school?It is a problem. I think we need to portray

engineering as a profession very much for what it is

rather than for what people think it is.

The connotation in Australia is that if you are an

engineer, you’ve got dirty hands, you wear a blue

coat, you make mundane decisions. The reality is

that you probably wear a white shirt and a suit.

You are making decisions that affect not just

those around you, but society at large. If we can

portray engineering for what it is, I think that will

assure parents that engineering is a good path to

follow. That should impact on school students.

The Centre for Advanced Design in Engineering Training at Deakin University offers future-focused facilities.

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EDUCATION

The other thing that we

are doing at Deakin is trying

to engage with the students

in primary and in high

school. We are supporting

the F1 in Schools challenge.

[F1 in Schools is an

international competition for

children aged 11 to 16 years.

Groups of students have to

design and manufacture

a miniature car out of the

official F1 Model Block using

CAD/CAM tools.] We are the

Victorian hub for that and

using our new building as an

environment to assist high

school teachers in delivering

on some of the sciences.

We’ve devised some

specific primary and high

school programs where

students experience what

a modern university is like.

If we concentrate more

and more on the primary

end of things then there is

good hope for the future that you can have a good

amount of students who will come into tertiary

education through the maths and sciences and

engineering route.

What can we learn from leading universities overseas?In the US there are some real standouts. Olin

College comes to my mind where they’ve really

done away with the traditional lecturer – it’s much

more student-based education. The staff act as

facilitators. They guide the students through

their learning.

In the UK, Coventry University has a similar

model. Another new university in the UK is The

JCB Academy, which focuses on design and

engineering. James Dyson in the UK has been very

vocal about how engineers and designers need to

come together much more closely.

There are things happening across the world. To

some extent we are a little bit stuck in the past in

Australia. It reminds me of New Zealand, where I

spent six years before coming to Australia.

In New Zealand, the focus is export, it’s all

about the external environment. I compare that to

Australia and there seems to be much more of a

focus on the internal market.

It’s almost a closed domestic view of the world.

I think that that also transposes across into the

engineering education sphere. We concentrate too

much on the past. We concentrate too much on

producing students for our own local industries

rather than having that global view of the world.

Trying to educate students who become graduates

who can go and support industries not only in

Australia, but right across the world.

The boom in the resources industry has certainly

driven up interest in civil engineering over the

past few years. However, advanced manufacturing

has been in a bit of a decline and numbers in

mechanical engineering are probably down across

the sector, although this year they so do seem to

have bucked the trend and have moved up slightly.

When we look towards advanced manufacturing

driving a smarts-based economy, we need to be

careful that we are producing the right type of

graduates who will fill those jobs in the future.

Let’s draw a line under the past and focus on the future.

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