Engineer Professional Identity For an Early Clarification of Student’s Perceptions Siegfried Rouvrais and Nathalie Chelin Telecom Bretagne, France 2010 Intl. CDIO Conference École Polytechnique de Montréal
Curriculum context Telecom
Bretagne : • “generalist” engineering school in 3 years - Signal processing, optics, electronics, computer science, etc.
• Freshmen: French Grande Ecole System with its prior preparatory classes (highly competitive exam: concours) • Students can optionally integrate a 1 year internship in companies only during the 2nd year (sophomores) • Last year students (seniors) must validate their curriculum with a 6 months internship • Also a part-time apprenticeship curriculum page 1
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Baseline: career kaleidoscope
2009
work placement of Telecom Bretagne junior graduates:
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CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Baseline Incoming
students: “ What do I do, what will I do?” • not necessarily a professional ideal • limited knowledge of the “working world” • do not always identify and understand the spectrum • struggle to identify career directions, thus career choice is often still undecided Student indecision corrobated by: • a 3h active session proposed to students approx. 150 students/year (since 2005) • 200 sophomores students asked to draft a 3 pages document describing their professional project (2007) page 3
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Objectives From
the early stages of their engineering studies: • to disclose to students career perspectives (goals: meaning to their studies and learning, engagement) • to give them a sense of responsibility (their wishes) Enhance their job applications, and be able to: • participate actively in their own learning path, • plan proactively their future career, • build their future professional identity, etc. Provide methods and tools to: • Identify, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create … page 4
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
© grand-illusions.com
“What’s an engineer ?” A 3h session to survey career directions
Introduced for generalist freshmen … and for sophomores in a part-time apprenticeship Active learning, team-based and presence of tutors 1. base groups (around 6) 2. five line definition of an engineer 3. collaborative definition 4. exhaustive list of jobs 5. conceptual map 6. competency example 7. list of ten pondered core competencies for a job page 5
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Results and limits Management/leadership
skills often missed Activity much more valuable for sophomores with a professional experience: • “generalist” freshmen found it hard to propose a list of jobs and to ponder competencies Too
brief session dependant of the profile and maturity level of our freshmen Too isolated to provide students with tools to analyze and evaluate various careers … but it stimulated career self-awareness and engineer identity perception page 6
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Career preparation program reform Before,
only in the 3rd year Initiate self-efficacy and reinforce self-confidence To improve students’ ability to actively participate in the construction of a realistic and more secured professional and personal project Now
integrates some workshops, active sessions, portfolios, career games, company visits, MBTI formative tests, one2one coaching, meetings, etc. 63h compulsory over 3 years page 7
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Broad lines Year
1: identification of one’s personality and skills • to recognize and valorise his current set of skills • to choose his courses and electives Year 2: career orientations • to discover the realm of career possibilities • to propose a first coherent professional project Year 3: itineraries • to define and evaluate career paths • to combine personal development • to build a reference social network Progressive approach which permit to reuse, on their own, at major stage of their profile evolution, methods and tools page 8
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
CDIO syllabus, first alignment attempt
2.5.2 - Professional behavior (professional bearing and courtesy) 2.5.3 - Proactively planning for one’s career: • a personal vision for one’s future; networks with professionals; one’s portfolio of professional skills 2.6 - Leadership, character and core personal values: • initiative; decision making in the face of uncertainty; responsibility, vision and intention in life 3.2 - Structured communications: • communications strategy and structure; written communication;oral presentation 3.4 - Leadership: relating to others: • 3.4.4 - grouping and diverse connections (ensembling) 4.1 - External, societal and natural context and environment: • 4.1.1 - roles and responsibility of engineers
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CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Conclusion Proposal
clearly dependant of our context: • very poor prior work experiences around engineering • career choice rarely decided in the 1st years • promoting learning activities to facilitate, reinforce and continuously support: - self-efficacy and confidence, perception from mere engineering students to future engineers - participation in their own choices, consistently with their aspirations and potential
To
early to derive a rigorous analysis Border effects: • e.g. other courses started addressing career issues, job booklet, middle-term market trends page 10
CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
Questions, remarks ? “Engineer Professional Identity: For an Early Clarification of Student’s Perceptions”
“Never ask your way to the one who knows, you may never lose yourself” By Simone Bernard-Dupré (translated)
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CDIO 2010 École Polytechnique de Montréal
“Engineer Professional Identity”, S. Rouvrais and N. Chelin
