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European Journal ofEngineering EducationPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceee20

Editorial: Staff developmentin higher engineeringeducationErik De Graaff , Anette Kolmos & Ole VintherPublished online: 02 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Erik De Graaff , Anette Kolmos & Ole Vinther (2001) Editorial:Staff development in higher engineering education, European Journal ofEngineering Education, 26:4, 325-327, DOI: 10.1080/03043790127517

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03043790127517

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Editorial

Staff development in higher engineering education

E RIK DE GRAAFF †, ANETTE KOLMOS‡ and OLEVINTHER §

The challenging task of training young engineers requires teachers in higher engi-neering education to possess both professional engineering skills as well as didacticskills. Over the past few years, the signi�cance of teaching quali�cations in engi-neering education has been increasing continuously. Nowadays, most engineeringschools in Europe have their own staff development centre, or they organize a staffdevelopment programme in another way. As a result there is a multitude of courses,training programmes and examples of best practice. Also, in many different placeslocal studies have been conducted evaluating the effectiveness of the staff develop-ment programmes.

With the purpose of sharing this growing wealth of experience, the PedagogicalNetwork for Danish Engineering Education and the Curriculum DevelopmentWorking Group of SEFI jointly organized a seminar on Staff Development inHigher Engineering Education hosted at Aalborg University, 5–7 October 2000. TheOrganizing committee for the seminar consisted of Anette Kolmos, AalborgUniversity, Ole Vinther, Pedagogical Network for Danish Engineering Educationand Erik de Graaff, Delft University of Technology, who acted as process facilita-tor during the seminar. As the target group we identi�ed all those who are profes-sionally involved in training of engineering faculty. The speci�c objective of theseminar was to provide a review of the state of the art in staff development in higherengineering education. The participants of the seminar were invited to write a seriesof articles to be published in the European Journal of Engineering Education. Tosupport communication between the respective groups of co-authors a Blackboardsite was maintained at Delft University of Technology.

Earlier, the following themes were identi�ed for group discussion:

� Teacher quali�cations.� New teachers and basic didactic skills.� Experienced staff—teaching new tricks to old dogs?

EUR. J. ENG. ED., 2001, VOL. 26, NO. 4, 325–327

† IPN Ingeniøruddannelsernes Pædagogiske Netværk, Lautrupvang 15, DK-2750Ballerup, Denmark.

‡ Centre for University Teaching and Learning, Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajers Vej7B, DK-9220 Aalborg Ø, Denmark.

§ Centre of Educational Innovation and Technology, Delft University of Technology,Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, The Netherlands.

European Journal of Engineering EducationISSN 0343-3797 print/ISSN 1469-5898 online © 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/0343379001000878 0

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� Structure and organization of staff development resources in higher engineer-ing education.

� New technology and teaching skills.� Attitude and personality aspects.

Eventually, eight teams were formed, focusing on the following subjects:

� Change into project-organized learning and problem-based learning (PBL).� Changing teacher roles.� Critical re�ection.� Educational programmes for new university teachers.� Enhancing staff development using information and communications tech-

nology (ICT).� Student expectations.� Modelling quality.� Strategies for staff development.

We are proud to present the �rst results of the seminar in this issue of the EuropeanJournal of Engineering Education. The �rst article, by Anette Kolmos and co-authors, deals with the organization of staff development—strategies and experi-ences. This article describes the experiences of a number of different staffdevelopment organizations from Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium, and signals thatthe organization of staff development varies greatly among institutes. It is depen-dent on the interaction between the formal requirements of the university teachingquali�cations, the institutions themselves and their course culture, the size andorganization of the teaching units, and the institutions’ management strategies andteaching methods. The advantages and disadvantages of a number of these strat-egies are analysed in order to provide inspiration for future implementation of thevarious methods.

The second article, written by a group around Jackie Walkington, the Australiankeynote speaker at the seminar, focuses on developing critical re�ection as a part ofteacher training and teaching practice. The central theme of this paper is theparadigm shift from the dissemination of knowledge to a focus on the students andhow to facilitate the best learning outcomes for them. The paper proposes thatcritical re�ection is at the heart of being an effective teacher. It invites teachers toevaluate their own philosophies about teaching and to be critically re�ective of theirown practice. It is suggested that teachers need to learn how to be re�ective prac-titioners through both self-evaluation and the use of collaborative strategies. It is nolonger appropriate to focus solely on the ‘what’, but also on the ‘how’ and ‘why’.

A large group of people joined Ivan Gibson to deal with the pressing issue ofICT and faculty development. The central objective of this paper is to investigatehow ICT may be bene�cial to staff development and to identify critical issues thatarise for the individual and for institutions of higher education with its introductionand implementation. The experiences of individual group members are comple-mented by an examination of the latest publications in this area and by the presen-tation of a few case studies. The authors come to the conclusion that ICT representsa powerful platform for universities to reach across academic boundaries and meeta greater diversity of future demands. The use of ICT leads to an increase in the�exibility and dynamism of the university organization. It is precisely because the

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changes brought about are so wide-ranging and profound that attention must bepaid to staff development.

We hope you will enjoy reading this �rst selection of papers on faculty develop-ment in engineering education. There are some more papers to come.

About the authorsOle Vinther is in charge of IPN-Pedagogical Network for Engineering Education in Denmark.He holds a degree in Electronic Engineering. He has, for the last 10 years, been heavilyinvolved with staff development for Danish engineering education, mainly related to peda-gogical and didactic issues. He has been an active member of SEFI for many years and is nowthe National representative for Denmark.

Anette Kolmos, PhD Associate Professor and Director at The Centre for University Teachingand Learning, Aalborg University. During the last 10 years, her major research areas havebeen PBL and project work within engineering education and development of transferableskills, and she has written many articles in this �eld. Since 1995 she has been involved in staffdevelopment and especially in how to facilitate change processes in higher education fromtraditional educational models to PBL models.

Erik de Graaff is employed as an Associate Professor at the Centre of Educational Innovationand Technology, Delft University of Technology, specializing in educational innovation. Overthe years he has published numerous works on problem-based learning, project-learning,student evaluation and educational innovations.

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