Dr. Yussuf Ahmed

The Impact of Work Placements on the Development of Transferable Skills in Engineering


Supervisors:

Professor Richard Holdich, Department of Chemical Engineering, Loughborough University
Dr Barry Haworth, Department of Materials, Loughborough University
Professor George Brown (University of Nottingham).

My research:

The main aims and objectives of this research are to investigate:

• The impact of work placements on the development of transferable skills in Engineering,
• The effect of work placements on academic performance and
• Whether the type or duration of work placement affects the acquisition of transferable skills.

This research extends work undertaken as part of the Equipe project which identified, evaluated and widely disseminated good practices in industrial placements in engineering.

Measuring Impact:

The standard method of measuring impact in engineering and in social science is to take measures before and after the impact. This model of pre-test, intervention, post-test is used in this research. However the measurement of impact in the social sciences and education is different from measurement in engineering. Whereas in engineering the measurements include precise instruments, in the social science the measurements rely heavily upon subjective measures such as the perception of students, those of their university/industrial training tutors and of their line managers in industry.

Research Methods:

This research uses a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods to measure impact. These include a structured open-ended questionnaire, interviews, focus groups, document analysis of curriculum and modules and measures of students’ achievement. At the core of the study is the students’ perception and their levels of achievement. The perception of the students will be correlated whenever possible with the perception of tutors and line managers and discussed in the context of the literature.

Publications

Ahmed, Y., Brown, G., Crawford, A., Haworth, B., and Holdich, R. (2006), “The Impact of Work Placements on the Development of Transferable Skills in Engineering”, In Proceeding of the ASET Annual Conference on Placement and Employability Professionals, pp. 52-55, 2006, ISBN: 978-0-954-2231-5-2.

Ahmed, Y., Brown, G., Haworth, B., and Holdich, R. (2007), "Engineering Students' and Line Managers' Perceptions of Value of Work Placements in Higher Education", In Proceeding of the ASET Annual Conference 2007.

Ahmed, Y., Brown, G. (2009), "The value of work placements", Enhancing the Learner Experience in Higher Education, 1(1), pp. 19-29, The University of Northampton, UK.


PhD Awarded June, 2009