palmer-whatistheon-2008.pdf (203.86 kB)
What is the on-campus experience? Engineering student study and work
journal contribution
posted on 2008-01-01, 00:00 authored by Stuart Palmer, S Bray, W HallAccreditation for off-campus engineering programmes has proven to be problematic. In Australia, off-campus programmes are compelled to contain mandatory residential sessions so that offcampus students can have an `on-campus experience'. This paper explores the nature of modern oncampus undergraduate engineering study, and finds that it now typically involves at least part-time employment and has more in common with off-campus study than the on-campus experience enjoyed by most of the current institutional (education and professional) administrators when they completed their undergraduate studies. Rather than ignore student term-time work, engineering programmes should use it to enhance the development of desirable graduate attributes.