Learning contracts for space industry staff development

This paper describes a flexible educational structure, the "Learning Contract", which is being used to provide postgraduate-level educational development to engineering staff working in the space sector in the United Kingdom. Kingston University's Masters by Learning Contract enables staff to embed knowledge and experience within a company. The main purpose of the Learning Contract is to bring industry and higher education together to enable working professional engineers to obtain a Master's degree or Postgraduate Diploma without the need to complete a taught or distance learning course. At the same time, learning contracts create a means by which technology, knowledge and expertise can be transferred from academia into industry, forming longterm partnerships and creating further opportunities. The scheme recognises the learning involved in completing an appropriate project of importance to the company. An individualised programme of activities is defined for each candidate. A contract sets out the learning objectives, the associated activities required, the assessment criteria by which each of the objectives will be achieved and the mode of assessment. Kingston University has successfully applied the learning contract approach to spacecraft engineering in the past for work relating to the Mars 96 FONEMA instrument. Recognising the effectiveness of this approach to staff development, FADS Astrium (formerly Matra Marconi Space) in the United Kingdom established eight learning contracts with Kingston. The paper details both the principles and methodology of the learning contract scheme, illustrates its application through examples in the particular context of FADS Astrium and gives details of progress to date.