Toward the improvement of quality in engineering education

The paper outlines the attempts by the Higher Education Funding Councils in the United Kingdom to assess the quality of education in the institutions it funds. It describes the Teaching Quality Improvement Scheme at the University of Salford (UK). University teachers may apply for grants to undertake research on their own instruction and the curriculum; it is a form of problem based learning into teaching and learning. An analysis of the educational needs of these teachers is made. These needs are related to those of students in a post graduate teacher training course in Ireland. From a comparison of these needs with the literature of engineering education, published in the last decade (much of it American), it is concluded that there exists in the engineering profession a corpus of knowledge capable of introducing commensurate courses to those in teacher education for engineering teachers, provided that a broad approach is taken.