The aim of the study was to ascertain the expectations and perceptions of engineering graduates regarding an engineering career in the world of work, and compare them to perspectives of academic leaders of the engineering disciplines in which these graduates studied. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study firstly entailed a quantitative survey…

The literature describes different stances concerning the focus on how mathematics should be taught, with some preferring a conceptual knowledge approach and others a procedural knowledge approach. The current study investigated the relationship between students' conceptual and procedural knowledge in a calculus context. To better understand the…

Over several years, first-year pre-service education students regularly experienced difficulty with engineering graphics activities. Research has already established that these activities require the use of well-developed spatial visualisation which is, for the most part, determined by a persons' spatial experience. The importance of this study…

Attainment of competency is crucial for civil engineering students to solve socio-economic and environmental challenges and contribute to the development of a sustainable society by using engineering principles. Consequently, competency has become the measure of engineering graduates for which deep learning is essential. Constructive alignment has…

In this article we present the results of an investigation into semiotic aspects of an introductory differential equations class from two countries. In order to perform a comparative analysis, students in the USA and Tunisia were given common questions on their midterm exams that examined analytical and graphical competencies. Our results indicate…

This research focused on first-year university students' visuospatial cognition in terms of producing three-dimensional (3D) representations of objects from two-dimensional (2D) views. The research was important since students often had difficulty with 2D to 3D transition activities. A synthesis from the literature established a 2D to 3D…

Debates continue about assessment methods and tasks in higher engineering education that would enable assessment of cognitive learning attributes and attainment of graduate attributes. This study explored the students' perceptions of the conventional and alternative assessment methods that are relevant and could be used to assess cognitive…

The study investigated the relationship between timely graduation and academic and institutional factors for a cohort of Engineering students at a South African university. The sample was restricted to 1595 incoming students beginning during 2009-2011 who were tracked to 2016, allowing for an eight-year graduation period for the initial cohort.…

Drawing on an academic literacies approach, this article explores the representations of technical communication by non-content expert tutors teaching the Technical Communication for Engineering course at a South African university. The course is offered to all first year engineering students as a developmental academic literacy course. It is…

Supervision lies at the heart of PhD pedagogy, but the focus has been on improving efficiency and completion rates of the PhD process rather than theorising about the nature of the postgraduate supervision process. The study explores the usefulness of situated learning as a theoretical framework for thinking about PhD pedagogy. In the process,…

While research into student learning in formal higher education contexts has a robust tradition, less literature exists on how learning is experienced in work settings. An understanding of the way learning is experienced in work settings not only provides insights for educators but is necessary for those who use these contexts in their curriculum…

This article reports on an activity in a first-year engineering mathematics class designed to strengthen students' personal identities as novice engineers. The literature on identity suggests that students are more likely to be retained in an engineering degree programme if they develop an identity as an engineer and that development of such an…

It has been argued in recent educational literature that assessment drives learning, and that assessment should therefore rigorously align with the intended outcomes of a course of study. This article describes a research project analysing the assessment tool for the research component of a professional degree in a faculty of engineering and the…

Much of the literature around the notions of discourse and identity explores how education (particularly higher education) might develop academic discourses and identities in students. There is however a dearth of work relating to what the development of academic discourses and identities in students might mean for the lecturers who teach them.…

Technology is often perceived simplistically as applied science, and therefore regarded as inferior to science. Scholars of technology, however, reject the view that technology is applied science and insist that technology is a cognitive system consisting of a separate body of technological knowledge. Although science is acknowledged as an…