What elements of engineering curricula do graduates really value? - A reflective survey

When designing a curriculum, engineering academics have a number of influencers shaping the process including student expectations, accrediting body requirements and the needs of employers in filling often very diverse graduate roles. They also consider modes of teaching which often balance best practice and resource constraints. Feedback from accreditation visits, module questionnaires and industrial advisory boards help iterate and revise the curriculum, etc. and while these are useful, they may often be indirect or inappropriate measures of the effectiveness of our programmes in the workplace. An area the sector in general has less hard information on are reflections of graduates on specific elements of their undergraduate learning experience once in industry. The survey presented here is part of a wider mixed methods approach which will also involve initial destination data and interviews with graduates. The work presented here is based on a survey of selected graduates from a particular degree family over the past decade. The curriculum has been broken down into five areas typical of many degrees; traditional engineering science, applied engineering skills (eg. CAD, Quality), internship, group design build and test projects and their individual thesis project with graduates asked to reflect on the impact and value of each of these on their subsequent working life as a graduate engineer.