ENGINEERING STUDENTS’ INTERACTION WITH INDUSTRY REPRESENTATIVES

The aim of this paper is to share and reflect on experiences of learning activities, in which engineering students meet with representatives from industry and public organisations to get acquainted with realistic engineering issues. The paper is based on experiences from two learning activities at Linköping University, which aim at making the engineering students familiar with realistic industrial issues. The first activity is a course in Lean production, in which a half-day conference is organised where representatives from industry and public organisations describe how they work with Lean in practice. The second consists of courses in Six Sigma, in which the students carry out Six Sigma and Quality Management projects in different companies. Data regarding the students’ experiences, learning and opinion about interaction with industrial and public sector representatives during their education were collected through questionnaires and interviews. The industrial representatives’ views were similarly collected through interviews and written evaluations. The findings are that the learning activities were highly appreciated. They gave a good picture of real working-life issues and were relevant to the students. In the Six Sigma projects, the students specifically described that they learnt a great deal, both about Six Sigma and about project management, how to describe their work in new ways, and how to solve practical issues. The industrial representatives expressed that they were satisfied with the students’ work, their competence, and the final result. It was beneficial that the students looked at the company problems from an outside perspective and that they contributed to knowledge sharing within the company. Experiences of organising these learning activities include highly positive feedbacks from students and participating organisations. For the teachers, even though it implies a lot of work, it is also a very positive experience contributing individual insights and life-long learning.