Emphasising Professional Engineering Elements In The Teaching Of Materials Technology

The re-development of pedagogy and curriculum in the Materials and Manufacture subject in the School of Architectural, Civil and Mechanical Engineering (ACME) at Victoria University (VU) in Melbourne was driven by changing pedagogical philosophy of engineering education at the university. The new pedagogical approach was to focus away from the traditional instructional models without fully discarding them. Though this subject was designated to be delivered as a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) subject, the educational approach taken was such that the PBL delivery was only a part of a pedagogical toolbox. The main educational thrust was one of inductive learning and teaching derived from courses such as creative arts. Aside from PBL, the inductive teaching approach incorporated Case-Based (CBL) and EnquiryBased learning (EBL) which provided the appropriate pedagogical scaffolding for knowledge integration. Material technological sciences, manufacturing engineering, engineering design, issues of ethics, sustainability and environment were weaved together. Such educational approach was necessary if strictly academic knowledge discourse was to be replaced by professional knowledge discourses. Students were exposed to the openendedness and messy nature of professional engineering discourses, to appreciate the interconnectedness of knowledge disciplines and the multidisciplinary nature of professional engineering work, and to instil into students’ with skills and knowledge which are convergent with the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Despite the reduction of contact hours for this subject the new pedagogical activity allowed to maintain the transmission of full body of knowledge and thus proved to be fairly effective. Students’ responses to surveys have, on the one hand indicated concerns with the amount effort required for this subject, but on the other hand showed an overwhelming satisfaction with this subject.