A conceptual framework to analyse diversity of perceptions in engineering students on learning management concepts

Context: several research studies showed that a move from technical specialty to a technical management role often begins at early stage of an engineer’s career. Engineers often find themselves in a management role as soon as they are assigned to a project. This transition from technical specialty to technical management by engineers in a very early stage of their career, means engineering graduates need relevant training to help them to be successful in new positions, either as a team supervisor, or manager of a division, or a department. In technically orientated organisations, evidence shows that the majority of managers have engineering or science degrees. The above notes also show that engineers or scientists are expected to have a very diverse knowledge and skills to perform duties outside the technically related engineering works, tailoring engineering education to meet the needs of all stakeholders. Purpose: the phenomenon we explain above had a major impact on engineering education; therefore, it is worthy to investigate how a wide range of engineering students would see the importance of learning different management concepts. Approach: this paper outlines a development of a conceptual framework to conduct this educational research (quantitative research) regarding a particular core subject in our institute’s engineering curriculum. In our work we design two surveys and distribute them among students and then analyse students’ opinions in relation to different management concepts. After obtaining initial results, we will modify our teaching and learning processes and we will conduct this research again to see whether diversity of students’ perceptions being changed or not. Results: in this stage, we have initially collected the first survey and we anticipate that by mid-year, we have a better understanding of engineering students’ opinions about learning management concepts. We have a wide range of students from different disciplines and we expect different opinions due to a variety of approaches by students to target potential careers. It is clear that students look for technical jobs first, and therefore, they may not pay attention to learning management concepts. Conclusions: due to teaching a variety of management concepts, the likely conclusions could be that students prefer to learn those management concepts that have some technological components, such as: quality control management, product design development and managing innovation. Concepts that have pure business themes such as: marketing, economics or general laws may be less attractive for engineering students.