A collaboration led by Dr Rehan Shah in conjunction with Northeastern University (USA) academic Dr Andrew Gillen has resulted in a publication in the reputed European Journal of Engineering Education, the flagship journal of the European Society of Engineering Education (SEFI) and is available as an open access paper on https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2023.2253741.

Over the last few decades, a wide range of works have featured studies documenting successful pedagogic collaborations in the form of university-industry partnerships in engineering education. Motivated by this, a systematic literature review of these studies was conducted centred around five key research questions: (a) purposes of university- industry collaborations, (b) theories used to guide such work, (c) types of methods employed, (d) evidence-based best practices identified and (e) areas of future work to be explored.

Publications were selected for inclusion by screening and appraising results obtained from databases and keywords refined through a scoping study. The conclusions from the findings suggested that future studies would benefit from better alignment with literature or theoretical frameworks and specific robust methods. Additionally, early and middle years of undergraduate engineering programs offer underutilised opportunities for partnership, in line with designing a more futures-focused educational curriculum.

Updated by: Rehan Shah