In this Section:
- Assessment
- CDIO
- e-Learning
- Employability
- Engineering Education Research
- Engineering Maths & Statistics
- Enterprise and Entrepreneurship
- Ethics
- Foundation Degrees
- Key Skills
- Linking Teaching and Research
- Personal Development Planning
- New Academic Staff
- Student Retention
- Sustainable Development
- Widening Participation
- Work-Based Learning
- Working with Disabled Students
- Using Images in Teaching
- Journals
- Glossary of Terms
Linking Teaching and Research
There are a number of ways in which engineering educators link research with teaching including influencing and forming curriculum content and enquiry based learning and research projects.
A number of recent government papers have also highlighted the future of HE as needing to take advantage of opportunities to link research and teaching for the success of the institution. Higher Ambitions (2009) sets the Government's commitment to "Ensuring the higher education sector is equipped to demonstrate research excellence" but alongside this highlights the need to improve knowledge transfer. There is also a commitment to enhance the support for STEM subjects to deliver the higher level skills agenda set out in the New Industries, New Jobs Strategy (April 2009).
This integration will benefit two primary stakeholders - the student in their education, and the academic in their professional standing:
"...research and teaching are essential and intertwined characteristics of a university which can be advanced from two perspectives:
- that of the students acquiring a "higher education", and
- that of the work of academic staff employed in higher education..."
[from the Report of the UK government's Research and Teaching Forum (2003), examining teaching and research links in the context of research selectivity.]
Resources and Activities
The Higher Education Academy's "Institutional Strategies to Link Teaching and Research" uses existing research evidence and practice about ways of developing the beneficial aspects of the linkage and draws on examples from a wide range of institutions in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, US and elsewhere. Case studies are also available from the “Bringing Teaching and Research Together" conference which focused on exploring links between research and undergraduate teaching programmes.
Funded through the Engineering Subject Centre Mini-Project scheme, Barry Beggs at Glasgow Caledonian University, led on a project based on the research-teaching linkages theme, "Establishing a virtual online journal for engineering students". It has focused on the student learning experience including graduate attributes and engaging the research community in enhancing the quality of the student learning experience.
The mini-project aims to develop an interactive, virtual online journal to allow students to submit technical papers and have them published. With partners at the Robert Gordon University and at the University of Strathclyde, the virtual journal will be developed to accept submissions based on final year undergraduate and MSc projects in engineering. For more information please contact Simon Steiner at simon@engsc.ac.uk