Events
SEMS Seminar Series: Community-based placements in higher education: a scoping study funded by the UCL Centre for Engineering Education
Dr. Rehan Shah (QMUL) and Dr. Irina Lazar (UCL)
Date: Wednesday 18 October 2023 14:00 - 16:00
Location: David Sizer Lecture Theatre, Bancroft Building, QMUL Mile End Campus
Dr Rehan Shah (QMUL) and Dr Irina Lazar (UCL) with QMUL/UCL student research interns
Forming strong regional partnerships and engaging with local businesses has become an institutional priority in the higher education sector, particularly within engineering disciplines. Community-based placements in engineering education have the potential to generate benefits for students, universities and communities alike and are increasingly being formally included into the curriculum. We believe scoping work in this area is essential, considering many universities like UCL and QMUL have campuses within underrepresented geographical areas such as London’s East End district.
This co-creational project (in conjunction with student interns) aims to generate a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of all aspects of community-based placements at undergraduate and postgraduate taught levels to benefit engineering education: how they are initiated and in what contexts, what their advantages and limitations are and their impact on employability and student experience. We therefore adopted a mixed methods approach informed by a qualitative investigation of research literature in the field together with publicly available resources and provisions across other institutions aimed at supporting community-based learning and placements. This data enabled us to map the community- based placements provision across the UK and develop a research agenda to inform future areas of investigation.
Further information on the project can be found at https://www.qmul.ac.uk/queenmaryacademy/students/co-creation/diversifying-the-curriculum-in-engineering-ug-programmes/
This seminar is also part of the research seminar event series organised by the Centre for Academic Inclusion in Science and Engineering (CAISE) at QMUL.