LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF UWA ENGINEERING GRADUATES
(Class of 2006)

Preliminary Results - Survey 1 March 2007
Preliminary Results - Survey 2 June 2007 (showing how much time is spent where)
Preliminary Results - Survey 3 September 2007 (working hours, training, mentors, desire for learning)
Preliminary Results - Survey 4 December 2007 (graduate development programmes and training)

Results from the first year of surveys have been presented in three papers (see here for more):

• American Society for Engineering Education Conference, Pittsburgh, June 2008
• Research in Engineering Education Symposium, Switzerland, July 2008
• Centre for Engineering Leadership and Management Conference, Perth, September 2008 (also attended by Ming Han Ho, and Colin Hedderwick). Write to us for a copy of the presentation.

A longitudinal study of UWA engineering graduates (class of 2006) is being conducted by the Engineering Learning & Practice Research Group to provide a better understanding of:

- What engineering graduates do in the workforce (especially those of you who decide not to pursue an engineering career).
- Which skills are most important for early career development.
- Relevance of undergraduate studies to your actual job.
- Whether a different engineering course help you more?

To address this lack of knowledge, we are embarking on a longitudinal study of UWA engineering graduates, just your class of 2006. We want to follow your career development and work patterns for several years. This is the first study of its kind in the world. We will track what you do, what you learn on-the-job, and how you are trained and mentored. This information will be used to build a picture of what our graduates do, and how they acquire certain skills in different environments. For more information about why the study is needed see over the page.

We need you to help us with this study! We want you to register your interest to be
part of the project when you graduate – even if you will not be working as an engineer or not in the engineering industry. We are interested in what all our graduates are doing.

We will send you an e-mail asking you to complete our web-based survey forms at intervals of about two months starting in March 2007. The survey forms will take 10 - 15 minutes to complete. We may also contact you for a brief phone interview from time to time.

All information provided will be confidential and will be destroyed at the completion of the survey in about 5 years.

What’s in it for you? At any time you can ask us to send your own survey responses to help you write a professional experience report. These reports can be useful for promotion, your CV and for supporting applications for admission to professional societies. You will also be able to read about the research findings before they are published.

Why is this study needed?

If you ask people “What do engineers do?”, the answer is usually “build bridges” or “design things”. However, most engineers will tell you this is not the case. So what do they do? UWA is embarking on a world-first research project to find out.

There are no recent, comprehensive investigations into engineering work as it is actually practised. Nor has there been any systematic research on the links between what is taught in engineering institutions, what graduates learn early in their careers, what training engineers undertake while in the workforce and how any of this contributes to producing competent engineers.

This research will help fill this surprising gap in our knowledge. In the long term, we hope to be able to help you work more effectively, and also we hope to educate a better generation of engineers who will be needed to solve the problems that lie ahead of all of us.