Engineering students are increasingly expected to work towards solving ‘wicked’ problems. Tacking such complexity can invoke a range of emotions and educators are increasingly required to support students in situations when they are confronted with uncertainty and value conflicts.

In this episode we speak to Johanna Lönngren, Associate Professor in Science and Engineering Education at Umeå University. Johanna is part of the Umeå Science Education Research (UmSER) group and focuses on the role of emotions in education for sustainable development, exploring how engineering students talk about, and collaboratively deal with, emotions when they work with complex sustainability problems.

Join Dr. Natalie Wint (University College London) and Prof. Neil Cooke (University of Birmingham) to learn more about the emotions that engineers experience when tacking complex and wicked problems

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction to episode

0.17 Podcast Intro

0.42 Experiences with student emotion from Natalie and Neil

3.45 Introduction to Johanna

8.23 University of Umeå

10.28 Wicked problems in engineering

15.08 Brining wicked problems into engineering education

19.15 Emotions in education

25.19 Emotion as social; implications for methodology

29.18 Emotions associated with wicked problems

32.18 Positioning theory

34.55 Emotional scaffolding

40.52 Studying and evaluating the use of emotional scaffolding

47.37 Techniques to help students deal with emotions associated with wicked problems

54.11 Supporting engineering educators in providing emotional scaffolding

56.54 Future work

1:00:40 Takeaways from Johanna

1:02: 18 Key takeaways from Natalie and Neil

Resources

https://wickedproblemsteaching.wordpress.com/.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03043797.2025.2474046?scroll=top&needAccess=true#d1e164

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educators: www.sefi.be

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Feedback and peer review is a key part of university life for both educators and students. Despite this, there are still gaps in our understanding how to best provide and make use of feedback. This episode features Ruth Fisher and Divya Naya, both from the University of New South Wales. We talk about the winner of the ‘Best Practice Paper’ at the SEFI 2025 Conference entitled “Using multistage peer reviews to provide feedback and improve student learning” which Ruth and Divya co-authored with Javier Videlo Mario and Shamim Aryampa.

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction to episode

0.27 Introduction to the episode

1.18 The context of the research

2.44 A summary of the work

3.40 The need for the work

6.20 How did the peer review process work?

10.00 How was the process evaluated?

12.37 Grading students' feedback

13.29 The main research questions

14.30 The findings

19.16 How did educators' feedback practice change?

21.06 The findings; educator reflections

24.28 Key takeaways

29.55 What's next?

Follow this link to read the full paper.

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educators: www.sefi.be

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Concerns for student mental health have grown over the last decade, particularly within engineering disciplines, which are often associated with heavy workloads and difficult assessment. There is subsequently an increasing need to understand the stressors that impact engineering students, and the ways in which we can support them to thrive.

In this episode we speak to Karin Jensen, an Assistant Professor and Faith Gacheru a first-year graduate student, both from the University of Michigan. Karin was awarded a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation for her research on undergraduate mental health in engineering programs and recognized with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, awarded by US President Biden in January 2025, whilst Faith recently presented a poster entitled A Mixed-Methods Study to Support Undergraduate Engineering Student Well-Being at ASEE 2025.

Join Dr. Natalie Wint (University College London) and Prof. Neil Cooke (University of Birmingham) to learn about stressors within engineering education and ways by which to encourage help-seeking behaviour.

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction to episode

0.23 Podcast Intro

0.45 Experiences with student mental health from Natalie and Neil

2.32 Introduction to Karin and Faith

7.06 University of Michigan

9.38 Key definitions, terminology and use of language

15.27 How concerns regarding mental health have changed

20.11 The role of engineering culture

24.21 Making changes at different levels of the system

26.32 Measuring stress and identifying stressors within engineering education

34.53 How do educators perceive mental health concerns

36.51 Thriving

38.09 Translating finding into teaching practices

47.21 How is the research being used to support other educators

48.29 Staff mental health

51.09 Future work

52.33 Takeaways from Karin and Faith

55.54 Key takeaways from Natalie and Neil

Resources

Details about Karin’s lab and work can be found here https://kjens.engin.umich.edu/ including The Engineering Stress Culture (ESC) Scale, a 10-item measure of undergraduate student perceptions of engineering stress culture and The Undergraduate Engineering Stressors Questionnaire (U-ESQ) (https://kjens.engin.umich.edu/research-well-being/)

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Education, SEFI, Europe's largest network of engineering

educators: www.sefi.be

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Despite the increasing magnitude and frequency of disasters, it remains unclear whether civil engineers possess the ability to understand disaster risk and design resilient infrastructures.

This episode features Anup Shrestha from Water and Development Research Group, School of Engineering, Aalto University (Finland).

We talk about the winner of the ‘Best Student Paper’ at the SEFI 2025 Conference entitled “Are Disaster-Prone Countries’ Undergraduate Students Prepared? Insights from a Civil Engineering Program in Nepal” which Anup co-authored with Julia Sundman, Josias Láng-Ritter, Maija Taka, Olli Varis (Aalto University) and Sudeep Lamsal (Sagarmatha Engineering College).

The paper considers the degree to which undergraduate civil engineering students in disaster-prone countries are adequately prepared. The research involves the use of a questionnaire to evaluate Nepalese students’ knowledge of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), resilience concepts, and related competencies. Students were found to exhibit DRR knowledge, but had limited opportunities to participate in DRR courses, workshops, or training. Whilst they possessed the basic concepts of resilience, there was a notable gap in their ability to apply these concepts in designing resilient structures. The research team thus suggest that additional efforts focus on integrating these competencies into engineering curricula.

For the full paper, follow this link:https://acris.aalto.fi/ws/portalfiles/portal/202473945/SEFI2025_040.pdf

This is the third episode from the new SEFI Podcast: Publication Spotlight series which aims to complement our normal, longer length shows. In these episodes, we speak with authors of recent publications to bring you up to date with some of the latest work within engineering education.

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction

0.27 Introduction to the episode an publication

1.08 How the work came about and the research team

4.25 Summary of the work

5.18 The research gap

7.36 Disaster risk reduction (DRR)

10.58 The research questions

12.10 Methodology

13.38 The findings

16.58 Implications for engineering education research and practice

20.24 Contextual differences

22.48 Staff and student perceptions to integrating DRR and resilience

26.27 What's next?

Join us! Become a member of the European Society for Engineering

Education, SEFI, Europe's largest network of engineering

educators: www.sefi.be

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The rising complexity of modern societal challenges has intensified interest in interdisciplinary engineering education.

In this episode we speak to Professor Anette Kolmos (Professor in Engineering Education and PBL) and Dr Henrik Worm Routhe (Postdoctoral Researcher) from Aalborg University (AAU) in Denmark, about InterPBL and the different approaches that can be taken to interdisciplinary learning and teaching.

Join Dr. Natalie Wint (University College London) and Prof. Neil Cooke (University of Birmingham) to learn about the many different ways in which we can integrate interdisciplinary projects into our engineering courses.

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction to episode

0.25 Podcast Intro

0.52 Experiences with interdisciplinary from Natalie and Neil

2.30 Introduction to Anette and Henrik

7.20 Aalborg University (AAU)

9.18 Introduction to InterPBL

13.00 Examples of the challenges associated with interdisciplinary project work

14.34 Aims of the InterPBL project

17.04 Interdisciplinary in engineering practice

21.00 Definitions

24.25 Cognitive trust and boundary objects

31.00 How does interdisciplinary work impact identity?

35.28 A typology of interdisciplinary projects

48.32 Students' motivation

50.57 Leadership

55.21 Assessment of interdisciplinary

58.41 Implications for staff and capacity building

1:00:50 Measuring the effectiveness of interdisciplinary learning and teaching

1:05:40 Introducting interdisciplinary in your own context

1:09:56 Mega-projects (M-Project) and broad interdisciplinary

1:15:25 Key Takeaways and implications from Anette and Henrik

1:25:38 What is next for research in this area?

1:28:48 Key takeaways from Natalie and Neil

Resources

A small sample of papers which focus on the InterPBL project are linked below

This paper focuses on student learning outcomes of interdisciplinary work

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10171180

This provides insights from a narrow interdisciplinary curriculum project named “leadENG

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/interdisciplinary-problem-based-projects-for-first-year-engineeri/

This paper focuses on development of leadership competencies

https://vbn.aau.dk/ws/portalfiles/portal/752930995/17_ijee4479.pdf

These papers focus on the different project types

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/15/2/138

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03043797.2023.2267476

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Education, SEFI, Europe's largest network of engineering

educators: www.sefi.be

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Although recognised as a priority for engineering education, implementation of Sustainable Development (SD) in curricula has been mixed and limited.

This episode features Marie Paretti from Virginia Tech and Maya Menon from the EdTech startup NextWork. We talk about a paper published in the European Journal of Engineering Education entitled “Understanding instructor decision-making in engineering education for sustainable development: a comparison of institutions in Denmark and the United States” which Maya and Marie co-authored with Jennifer Case and Andrew Katz. The study compared the external, internal (institutional) and individual influences on instructors’ decision-making, in relation to the incorporation of SD into the courses they teach within institutions in two different national contexts.

This episode is the second in our series of episodes that take on a new format and are released at intervals along with our normal longer length shows.

For the full paper, follow this link: https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2025.2486189

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction

0.29 Introduction to the episode an publication

1.25 How the work came about and the research team

3.12 Summary of the work

4.02 The research gap

5.16 The research questions

7.27 Terminology; Sustainability, Sustainable Development and the UN SDGs

10.50 Theoretical underpinnings

13.58 Comparative Case Study Methodology

18.04 Data sources and analysis

21.12 The findings

29:49 Implications for engineering education practice

32.31 Implications for engineering education research

35.23 Goodbyes

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educators: www.sefi.be

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Engineering is a global profession, with various efforts focusing on the globalisation of engineering practice. However, there are many differences between engineering education systems in different contexts.

In this episode we discuss what we can learn by comparing engineering education across contexts with Professor Roger Gonzalez from The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), author of the monograph “Adapting Engineering Education to a Rapidly Changing World” which focuses on the differences between engineering education systems, particularly those associated with the UK and the USA.

Join Dr. Natalie Wint (University College London) and Prof. Neil Cooke (University of Birmingham) to learn about the ways in which students are contributing their their own engineering education, and what we can learn from them.

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction to episode

0.25 Podcast Intro

0.50 Experiences with students collaboration from Natalie and Neil

2.13 Introduction to Roger and his work

5.04 Introduction to UTEP

6.44 Why is this work needed and why now?

10.15 How was the work conducted?

12.44 Differences in terms of student admissions into engineering

15.58 Implications for widening access and participation

19.10 Why are there differences between contexts?

22.42 Differences in length and structure of programmes, teaching, learning and assessment and the role of student unions

29.42 Differences in content of the degree

33.01 Degree variants and the role of industry

36.12 The role of Quality Assurance (QA) and student feedback and the role of funding

45.24 Accreditation

48.35 What can we learn from the differences?

53.42 How do these learnings apply to other contexts and countries?

54.47 How will engineering education change in the future; AI.

1:02:35 Key Takeaways from Roger

1:05:02 Key takeaways from Natalie and Neil

Key Resources

You can access Roger’s monograph by following the link below

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-78908-3

Join us! Become a member of the European Society for Engineering

Education, SEFI, Europe's largest network of engineering

educators: www.sefi.be

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This is our first episode which takes the new format which we will be released at intervals along with our normal longer length shows. In these episodes we will be bringing you up to date with some of the latest work within engineering education by speaking with authors of recent publications.

For our first episode of this I am speaking with Madeline Polmear from Kings College London, who featured in our very first season of the podcast.

And we are going to talk about a paper published in the Journal of Engineering Education entitled Exploring engagement narratives among self-identified Hispanic women's experiences in engineering counterspaces which Madeline co-authored with Elizabeth Volpe, Idalis Villanueva Alarcón and Denise Simmons.

For the full paper, follow this link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jee.20630

Timestamps

0.00 Welcome and introduction

0.27 Introduction to the episode an publication

1.22 The research team

3.08 Summary of the work

4.30 The research gap

5.58 The research questions

6.35 Theoretical underpinnings

10.15 Methodology; Data Collection and analysis

12.21 The findings

15.32 Implications for engineering education practice

17.12 Implications for engineering education research

19.10 Goodbyes

Join us! Become a member of the European Society for Engineering

Education, SEFI, Europe's largest network of engineering

educators: www.sefi.be

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.