Using students with current industry experience to evaluate course delivery

This paper considers the opportunity for academic-industry collaboration that arises when a proportion of engineering students ina cohort are part-time students with current industry experience. It describes a study that took the opportunity of probing theresponse of these students to aspects of course design, using their perspective to answer the questions: ‘How successful are we inour attempts to create realistic project work for students, and what improvements should be made?’ The consensus from semi-structured group interviews with 52 students is that the project work they have experienced is generally realistic from a technicalpoint of view, enhanced by basing projects on a real site, using real data, and working with a realistic brief. Some studentsconsidered the briefs to be too open-ended to be realistic, but others relished the opportunity this presented. Team-working aspectsof university group projects were not considered realistic by the students; they pointed out that the environment in engineeringpractice is very different because it is moderated by the management structure and professional expectations of staff. The role of aclient figure was identified as important in creating realism. The paper considers the potential conflict between some aspects ofrealism in project work and educational benefit.