Undergraduate engineering students’ knowledge, perceived competence and perspectives of university graduate attributes

Abstract

Graduate attributes (GAs) are widely embedded within engineering curricula; however, students’ awareness of these attributes, their perspectives on their relevance and how they are implemented across teaching and assessment contexts are rarely reported. This study explores engineering students’ awareness, perspectives and perceived competence in four university-prescribed GA – bicultural competence and confidence (BICC), community engagement (CE), global awareness (GA) and employable, innovative and enterprising (EIE) – within a large engineering department in Aotearoa New Zealand. A mixed-methods survey design was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data from multiple student cohorts, examining where students perceived GA to be embedded across lectures, assessments and extracurricular experiences. Findings indicate that many students were initially unfamiliar with the university’s GA yet perceived them to be highly relevant to their engineering education once articulated. Students reported uneven visibility of GA across learning contexts, with greater recognition in lectures and continuous assessments than in summative assessments. These findings highlight the value of foregrounding student perspectives to inform the explicit integration of graduate attributes within engineering curricula.