An evidence-informed approach to course development: incorporating insights from working engineers on the skills that enable graduate school success

Lydia Wilkinson

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Conference: 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Publication Date: June 22, 2025
Start Date: June 22, 2025
End Date: August 15, 2025
Conference Session: GSD 8: Industry and Professional Skills
Tagged Division: Graduate Studies Division (GSD)
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--57610
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/57610
Download Count: 14

Paper Authors

biography

Lydia Wilkinson University of Toronto orcid.org/0000-0003-1917-0002

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Lydia Wilkinson is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the Institute for Studies in Transdisciplinary Engineering Education and Practice, University of Toronto, where she teaches courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels focused on the development of communication skills, as well as a range of other connected competencies, including
teamwork, leadership and sociotechnical thinking. Her current research investigates interdisciplinary skills transfer with a specific focus on humanities integration for engineers.

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Abstract

Research Methods and Project Execution was launched in 2015 to provide Chemical Engineering graduate students at [redacted] with consistent instruction on transferable or transdisciplinary skills including project management, research skills and teamwork within research environments. The course combines activity-based instruction and consistent peer-to-peer discussion and feedback , emphasizing the value of communicating about one’s research as central to refining and improving one’s research goals and approach. Our course development was informed by significant stakeholder engagement, including graduate student focus groups, review of data from alumni surveys and discussion with graduate supervisors from across the department. While this engagement was central to our original vision of the course, continued community involvement has helped to further its development, as we have launched a faculty-wide offering and an online repository of course activities and resources, and continued to refine our course topics and methods.

An alumni interview assignment, which challenges students to learn more about graduate-level experiences, resources and skills that inform engineering work in industry provides an important tool to maintain the currency of this course. In the assignment, students identify an alumnus (from our institute or a comparable program) whose career path they find interesting and conduct an interview that focuses on the resources and opportunities that helped them succeed in their post-graduate career, as well as the types of activities or strategies that they feel would have been helpful in retrospect. Following the interview students share their findings in a 5-minute presentation and via a written summary. The data from these interviews, which have now been conducted with 152 working engineers, provide important insights into the skills that alumni locate post factum as most central to their success. Coding for the first two years of this data identified the importance of non-technical and transferable skills, including perseverance, teamwork and communication . We will conduct a qualitative content analysis of the complete data set to identify prominent skill categories and related activities. This data will provide valuable information on the experiences that help graduate students develop these skills alongside their technical expertise. This paper will describe this assignment as a model for evidence-informed course development, by detailing the assignment, summarizing and analyzing the data from the alumni interviews, and sharing how this has informed our course development.

[1] D. Boud and A. Lee, “‘Peer learning’ as pedagogic discourse for research education,” Studies in Higher Education, vol. 30, no. 5, October 2005, pp. 501-516. [2] Redacted

Citation
Format

Wilkinson, L. (2025, June), An evidence-informed approach to course development: incorporating insights from working engineers on the skills that enable graduate school success Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Montreal, Quebec, Canada . 10.18260/1-2--57610

TY - CPAPER
AB - Research Methods and Project Execution was launched in 2015 to provide Chemical Engineering graduate students at [redacted] with consistent instruction on transferable or transdisciplinary skills including project management, research skills and teamwork within research environments. The course combines activity-based instruction and consistent peer-to-peer discussion and feedback , emphasizing the value of communicating about one’s research as central to refining and improving one’s research goals and approach. Our course development was informed by significant stakeholder engagement, including graduate student focus groups, review of data from alumni surveys and discussion with graduate supervisors from across the department. While this engagement was central to our original vision of the course, continued community involvement has helped to further its development, as we have launched a faculty-wide offering and an online repository of course activities and resources, and continued to refine our course topics and methods.

An alumni interview assignment, which challenges students to learn more about graduate-level experiences, resources and skills that inform engineering work in industry provides an important tool to maintain the currency of this course. In the assignment, students identify an alumnus (from our institute or a comparable program) whose career path they find interesting and conduct an interview that focuses on the resources and opportunities that helped them succeed in their post-graduate career, as well as the types of activities or strategies that they feel would have been helpful in retrospect. Following the interview students share their findings in a 5-minute presentation and via a written summary.
The data from these interviews, which have now been conducted with 152 working engineers, provide important insights into the skills that alumni locate post factum as most central to their success. Coding for the first two years of this data identified the importance of non-technical and transferable skills, including perseverance, teamwork and communication . We will conduct a qualitative content analysis of the complete data set to identify prominent skill categories and related activities. This data will provide valuable information on the experiences that help graduate students develop these skills alongside their technical expertise. This paper will describe this assignment as a model for evidence-informed course development, by detailing the assignment, summarizing and analyzing the data from the alumni interviews, and sharing how this has informed our course development.

[1] D. Boud and A. Lee, “‘Peer learning’ as pedagogic discourse for research education,” Studies in Higher Education, vol. 30, no. 5, October 2005, pp. 501-516.
[2] Redacted

AU - Lydia Wilkinson
CY - Montreal, Quebec, Canada
DA - 2025/06/22
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - An evidence-informed approach to course development: incorporating insights from working engineers on the skills that enable graduate school success
UR - https://peer.asee.org/57610
DO - 10.18260/1-2--57610
ER -