Start Date

6-6-2017 12:00 AM

Description

Short Abstract:

this paper will outline the design, implementation and reflections of postgraduate ‘Research Methods for Manufacturing’ Module at Coventry University that provided a real-world industrial problem and encouraged living the research problem with teaching, learning and assessment structured to create a student-centered reflective environment that developed professional attributes and technical skills.

Full Abstract:

Specifically, students in their first 16-week long semester of their 12-month program undertook this module and worked in small groups. They were given an open brief around a manufacturing cell in the automotive industry for which data had been collected from an automated test machine (there were over 50,000 rows of data over a 12 month period) and asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the cell and to determine any problems and investigate root-causes. This approach presents students with uncertainty (appropriate at postgraduate level), but not a completely unbounded problem, as they can examine the data; this lack of context can be part of the issue generally with the abstract nature of research methods teaching. Therefore, the students focused on analyzing the data, generating their initial hypotheses and research questions, which were presented using an industry-standard reporting template; this template was deliberately chosen to develop industry-relevant skills (professional development). Students then presented formatively each week on further refinements in their data analysis, refining and iterating questions and reflecting on what they had learned through facilitated support from the teaching team – in essence, living an action research approach as external consultants (Herr and Anderson, 2014). The formative feedback did not focus just on the technical aspects, but supported their soft-skills development also (around presentation, team-work and communication).

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Jun 6th, 12:00 AM

Experiential-centered Research Skills Development: getting engineers to understand the people in the problem

Short Abstract:

this paper will outline the design, implementation and reflections of postgraduate ‘Research Methods for Manufacturing’ Module at Coventry University that provided a real-world industrial problem and encouraged living the research problem with teaching, learning and assessment structured to create a student-centered reflective environment that developed professional attributes and technical skills.

Full Abstract:

Specifically, students in their first 16-week long semester of their 12-month program undertook this module and worked in small groups. They were given an open brief around a manufacturing cell in the automotive industry for which data had been collected from an automated test machine (there were over 50,000 rows of data over a 12 month period) and asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the cell and to determine any problems and investigate root-causes. This approach presents students with uncertainty (appropriate at postgraduate level), but not a completely unbounded problem, as they can examine the data; this lack of context can be part of the issue generally with the abstract nature of research methods teaching. Therefore, the students focused on analyzing the data, generating their initial hypotheses and research questions, which were presented using an industry-standard reporting template; this template was deliberately chosen to develop industry-relevant skills (professional development). Students then presented formatively each week on further refinements in their data analysis, refining and iterating questions and reflecting on what they had learned through facilitated support from the teaching team – in essence, living an action research approach as external consultants (Herr and Anderson, 2014). The formative feedback did not focus just on the technical aspects, but supported their soft-skills development also (around presentation, team-work and communication).