Strategies to improve engineering students' knowledge of emerging technologies.

This paper originated as an IEEE conference paper based on the collaborative work between the University of Minho, Portugal and the PDRC research group at Middlesex involving a study of collaborative teamwork: “Gaspar, T., Rodrigues, H., Odedra, S., Costa, M., Metrôlho, J.C., Bardill, A. and Prior, S.D. (2004), Handheld Devices as Actors in Domotic Monitoring System, Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics 2004 – INDIN'04, 24-26 June, Berlin, Germany, ISBN: 0-7803-8513-6, pp. 547-551.
Published by the International Association for the Development of Advances in Technology (IADAT).
This collaboration was made possible by a successful bid to the British Council's Windsor Treaty Programme in 2000. The focus of the project was on the design of an autonomous unmanned vehicle for surveillance and transport operations using Bluetooth (TM) technology. This paper describes some successful experiences within design engineering departments where emerging paradigms have been used to improve students' know-how. This experience has resulted in students with high skills in fields of high need in the employment market and with experience to work effectively within multi-disciplinary teams.
This work has made a significant impact on engineering product design curriculum at Middlesex University where the academic programmes are using the strategies developed through this research work. An example of this is utilising external competitions such as the European Robot Championship, EU-Robot, as a vehicle to enhance student experience. This is also the subject of a further publication to be presented at the next International Conference in Engineering Education 2008, taking place at Loughborough University, UK.