Simultaneous development of management skills and behaviours in taught academic programmes

Abstract

Technical programmes frequently focus exclusively on the associated technical domain knowledge and skills with perhaps some generic skills development coincidentally and perhaps accidentally included. If Higher Education (HE), as the main provider of competent graduates, is to enable employers to be able to respond to the key global challenges of the next decade, is a pure focus on technicalities sufficient? It is contended that the answer is no, graduates need to have competence in aspects of management they will face in the early stages of employment. This attitude is firmly adopted in the department of Electronics at the University of York where management is integrated into almost all in its undergraduate and some of its postgraduate programme portfolio. The paper starts with a discussion of the justification for management teaching as a legitimate subject in the Electrical and Information Education field. This is followed by a literature review that considers the skills and behaviours managers need, appropriate pedagogies to develop these and assessment methods suitable to warrant them. A case study is then described of the Electronic Engineering programmes at the University of York including, a dedicated taught Masters in Engineering Management. In the taught MSc in Engineering Management there is a consistent approach to the assessment of generic skills, a strong emphasis on curiosity-based learning and a structured individual learning log for every student. Statistics on student numbers and feedback on the programme from different student groups and the programme's external examiner are given. The overall quality assurance measures taken for the programme are also briefly discussed. The paper proposes a generic programme modular structure that provides space for technical content but also for management content and shows how managerial behaviours can be developed as an integral part of the programme. It also describes the approach taken to assessment and discusses the issues these bring, in particular scalability.