|
The first students now pass their fourth year of the engineering nano technology programme at Lund University, a five-year programme leading to a Master of Science in Engineering. In order to understand effects of curriculum and instructional design on student learning, focus group interviews were conducted with groups of students in their third and fourth years of study. The overall impression is that the students prefer studying at a programme designed to focus thematically on nano science and engineering compared to traditional engineering studies. It is also clear that the students experience and appreciate a gradual progression from first-year relatively controlled learning situations towards learning based on scientific discussion in subsequent years. The students further conceive their education as research-based, interesting, with a transparent and truly multidisciplinary approach. However, they also do worry about future employability, achieving sufficient specialisation in addition to the obvious scientific width, and being "guinea pigs" in a comparably new educational field. Notably, these worries were regarded as a problem, rational or not. So, our impression is that the multidisciplinary characteristic of nano education programmes provides an educational challenge with more promises than hurdles. Our interviews raised further issues that we would like to discuss:
-Do we promote student learning strategies for passing the programme, as well as for actually learning its curriculum?
-Do we provide both lab skill and a scientific perspective on the relation between observation and theory?
-What are the pedagogic consequences of involving a chain of specialist lecturers with limited programme overview?
-What are the consequences of teaching parallel courses?
|