Abstract
The recent pioneering initiatives undertaken at the School of Engineering Science at Murdoch University associated with the way our students are taught in the last two years of their study will be introduced in this paper. The conversion of the third and fourth year of the study programme from the traditional model of teaching that incorporates lectures, tutorials and laboratory work into the engineering studio mode will be presented. The use of industry based projects and problems to devise a modern curriculum for the most advanced training of instrumentation and control engineers will be explained. The model is mapped across the attributes of Engineers Australia as well as the Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain which includes the six major levels of such domain, namely, knowledge, understanding, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The paper will present these pioneering initiatives currently being used as a pilot program by Engineers Australia. By the end of the year such approach will be fully evaluated by Engineers Australia. It may become the basis of the education and training across many Engineering Schools in Australia, mainly due to the fact that it resembles as close and realistic as possible industry practice. It is undoubtedly useful as an advanced approach to graduate engineers with the attributes the industry requires. The various components of this approach, such as brainstorming, analysis, report making, progress reporting writing, presentations and project evaluation will be discussed. Examples will be provided so that one can appreciate the value of this approach. The final semester intership programme will also be briefly discussed to present the complete picture of the way Murdoch University’s Engineering students are encouraged to enter the profession with a higher level of experience when compared with many other programmes within the country.