In developing the programme, what we wanted to do was really build a programme that was
interesting and engaging, that would really grab students from day one and engage them
with the practice of engineering. Engage them with projects, engage them with joint work,
engage them with the sort of problem solving which engineers in their professional practice
are undertaking.
Traditionally what we do is we get students to sit in lecture theatres, either reading their
powerpoint notes or copying things down and receiving our wisdom.
What we found was that students were becoming disenchanted by the second year, because the
first two years, typically, were very theoretical. They were learning lots of abstract theory
but no practical engineering. These are people who want to do practical engineering.
The best way to do it is to give them the information that they're going to need and
then engage with them, interact with them. So we use our class time for what we think
class time is useful for - which is engaging with our students.
Right from the first day of your first term, you'll be doing something that's quite unique.
Something that you don't do in any other course. You'll be put into teams to actually work
on practical design solutions. You'll be creative, you'll be using your ingenuity to come up
with something that actually addresses a problem.
That's what gets them going, that's what they've chosen to come and do a civil engineering
degree for. And that turning it around gets them learning the whole of the rest of the engineering
in that context. That drives their ability to understand the theory, it drives their
ability to understand the practice. That means that we turn out better engineers in the end.
The programmes at UCL support the student in a number of ways, through both personal
contact with tutors, but also through e-learning and other methods. We've been doing a lot
of work recently on video capture and how students can replay the lectures, as well
as getting additional material to help them study and to support them through their work
at UCL.
The thing is, these soft or transferrable skills, whatever you want to call them, not
only will they help students when they go out into the job market, but they will also
make them better students while they're here. It'll help them to deal better with the technical
material that they'll be encountering in their courses.
Mathematics is the main toolbox for practising engineers. We want our students to become intuitive
mathematics users. They will use mathematics throughout their studies and in the workplace.
We've streamlined the number of degrees that we offer, but that doesn't mean we've limited
choice. In fact, students can take a minor option which allows them to take a programme
that's either in an interdisciplinary topic, or a subject that's in another discipline,
such as management or biomedical engineering, which really allows students to follow their
desired choices in terms of their degree programme.
To me it's not about teaching. Teaching is about how one person imparts information to
another. What we're about is learning, which is how I learn to do something I couldn't
do before. What we do is we inspire students to learn.
We genuinely believe in the power of engineering to change the world, and what we're doing
is, we are bringing students who share that vision, and we are actually giving them the
skills that will allow them to make that a reality.