How well does collaboration work in engineering project curriculum redesign?

Abstract

Academics, librarians, and student learning advisors collaborated to redesign the Civil & Environmental Engineering undergraduate course curriculum at the University of Auckland and to integrate information literacy principles. The aim was to improve students’ research skills in line with the University’s Graduate Profile, and also meet the Institution of Professional Engineers’ requirements for accreditation. This paper will focus on the changes that have been made to the compulsory Civil & Environmental Engineering Year 4 research-based project paper. The curriculum was redesigned by introducing a series of lectures and tutorials to lead students through the project process. These covered literature reviews, annotated bibliographies, searching and evaluating information resources, writing and presentation skills, data analysis, referencing and use of Endnote. Academics, librarians, student learning support staff and IT staff collaboratively designed sessions on information literacy resources and annotated bibliographies using a student-centred approach. The required literature review had to include items from at least three different sources such as patents, journal articles, standards, conference papers and e-books. Search techniques were taught by the subject librarian in a hands-on computer tutorial. Student learning advisors and academics developed a framework within the automatic online peer review system (Aröpa). Using this, each student reviewed three, randomly assigned, double-blind, students’ annotated bibliographies, literature review and abstracts. This enabled weaknesses to be identified and addressed at an early stage of the project by student learning advisors. The collaboration between academic staff, librarians, and student learning advisors proved time-consuming but achieved excellent results in curriculum redesign. In this paper we will discuss the aims, methods used, results achieved, lessons learnt and proposals for future improvements.