Resumen de Strengthening educational partnerships: An online preparation program for engineering partners
Franziska Trede, Reza Mahinroosta
One of the key goals of professional engineering entry courses is to prepare graduates for the world of work, fosterprofessionalism and strengthen employability. Universities can best accomplish this with effective, reciprocal educationalpartnerships with industry that include professional development support for host supervisors based on sharededucational values and goals. To this end, a purposeful, self-paced, online preparation program for host supervisorswas developed for an innovative, practice-based engineering degree situated in regional Australia. Survey methodologybefore and after the completion of the online preparation program was used to explore host supervisors’ perceptions of itsvalue and effectiveness as well as their views of what makes a good host supervisor. The results demonstrated that onlinepreparation program was well received with supervision skills for cadet engineers the most informative of the five topics.Participant data provided evidence of host supervisors’ insights into the complexity of their supervision role beyondtraining and recruiting technically competent future engineers. The paper discusses participants’ keen interest incontributing to educating the next generation of engineers, their interests in purposeful, supervisor-centred professionaldevelopment programs and concludes with implications for further research in this neglected yet so important aspect ofengineering education.
