What Competencies Should Undergraduate Engineering Programs Emphasize? A Dilemma of Curricular Design that Practitioners' Opinions Can Inform.

Abstract

Designing a curriculum is a multifaceted challenge. Issues concerning implementation of the curriculum plan must be considered simultaneously with questions about what competencies students should have upon graduation and what the relative emphasis should be among those competencies. These questions were addressed with data from twelve studies in which 10,203 engineering graduates rated the importance of various competencies. All the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) competencies are deemed important as well as additional competencies, including decision-making (highest importance), commitment to achieving goals, the ability to integrate theory and practice effectively in work settings, leadership skills, and project management (lowest importance). The pattern of importance ratings for respondents overall holds across sub-groups, with rare exceptions. Every statistically significant difference is for a subgroup based on work environment or academic discipline, not demographic, developmental, or time-related variables. This is consistent with Holland’s theory, which predicts that differences in the importance ratings of competencies will be based on undergraduate major and work environment.

Engineering graduates perceive the competencies as professional competencies and technical competencies. In the meta-analysis, the sequence of professional competencies is: oral communication (most important), written communication, ethics, life-long learning, teamwork, contemporary issues, and understanding the impact of one’s work (least important). The sequence of technical competencies is: problem solving (most important), data analysis, engineering tools, design, “math, science, and engineering knowledge”, and experiments (least important).

Engineering graduates across demographic groups and most majors and work environments consistently rate a top cluster of competencies – problem solving, communication, and data analysis – as significantly more important than a bottom cluster of competencies – contemporary issues, experiments, and understanding the impact of one’s work. Competencies in the intermediate cluster – ethics, life-long learning, teamwork, engineering tools, design, “math, science, and engineering knowledge” – may be statistically tied to the top or bottom clusters, depending on work environment or academic discipline. The few exceptions to this pattern pertain to repositioning of one or two competencies. Therefore, the clusters, the sequence for the professional competencies and the technical competencies are an excellent first approximation for curriculum design in any engineering major.