Background

This article is a case study of the revamp of a mandatory course “SEEM 4066: Professional Engineering Practice” of BEng in Systems Engineering and Management (BESEM) (previously BEng in Total Quality Engineering (BETQE)) under the Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management (SEEM), City University of Hong Kong (CityU), a programme accredited by the HKIE.

SEEM 4066 aims to strengthen students’ understanding of the role of engineers in the society and how engineers must adopt the rapid change of the social and technological environment. The syllabus of SEEM 4066 was reviewed and updated with more innovation and technology-oriented content^{1, 2}.

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, CityU has implemented campus-wide and real-time online teaching for postgraduate and undergraduate students since 7 February 2020. The first class was held on 18 January 2020 and then changed into online teaching on the second class on 8 February 2020 after Chinese New Year (see Figure 1). After this significant change, the online course has incorporated more interactive elements for students through polling, weekly quizzes, surveys, team projects and personal development essays relating to their engineering career development. It was convenient to analyse students’ responses through online activities so as to understand the tendency of their further development in different engineering fields.

Figure 1: A comparison between face-to-face teaching and real-time online teaching

The content of the revamped course is shown in Table 1. The key additional syllabus includes industrial policy such as the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiatives, and advanced technology - ABCDE (which stands for artificial intelligence (AI), block chain, cloud computing, data technology and edge computing) from Industry 4.0 to Quality 4.0. Moreover, Entrepreneurship and Startup Ecosystem is a new subject for engineering courses ^{3, 4, 5, 6}. Student assessment is separated into three parts: 25% on quiz, 35% on personal development essay and 40% on team project
presentation.

Table 1: New syllabus of SEEM 4066

Discussion on students’ polling

The class had 70 students and some of the students’ responses (number of respondents usually around 40) through polling were interesting. In Lecture 1, I shared my experience in OBOR countries and asked the students which country they would like to visit, work, and live in. It was surprising that 54% of the students selected to visit and 37% work in Vladivostok, Russia. Slovenia and Croatia, and Saudi Arabia were their second and third choices respectively (see Figure 2a). The students were then asked which cities in the GBA they would like to work and live in. The first three cities were Macau (59%), Shenzhen (32%) and Guangzhou (24%) (see Figure 2b). The results are reasonable, for most Hong Kong people recognise these three cities in the GBA.

Figure 2a: Results of student poll on OBOR countries they would like to visit, work and live in

Figure 2b: Results of student poll on GBA cities they would like to work and live in

In Lecture 3 on innovation and technology management, different innovation tools were introduced and the students’ feedback was that TRIZ was the most powerful yet difficult to use. The second most difficult tool to use was Extenics, which was originally from the PRC. Then the students were asked to evaluate their role under an innovation culture using Peter Merrill’s self-assessment at https://questmgt.com/freeself-assessment that identified four innovative people in the organisation as follows⁷ (% of student response):

i) Creators - find opportunity (22%)
ii) Connectors - find solutions (47%)
iii) Developers - make the solution work (17%)
iv) Doers - deliver the solution (14%)

47% of the students were Connectors and 22% of them were Creators. In other words, the students were less practicable on implementing the solutions they found.

In Lecture 4, the students were found not familiar with AI. However, one interesting poll was made: if the students were the programmer of a self-driving car, what would they decide to programme when an accident happened in which the car would crash into a lot of people, one man or a building. Most students selected to crash into a building to sacrifice the motorist, which would lead to a question as to whether people would buy such a car. It was observed that students were usually idealistic and utilitarian.

Another interesting poll is on Lecture 6 about entrepreneurship and startup. Two identical polls were conducted before and after the lecture and the results are shown in Figure 3. 17% - 18% of the engineering students chose to be professional engineers at first. After the lecture, more of them selected “research and development (R&D)”, “executive in SME” and “startup founder” as career choices. Overall, nearly 30% of the students selected “startup founder” and “partner of company”.

Figure 3: Student career type selection before and after the lecture on entrepreneurship and startup

Analysis of the survey

An online survey on the usefulness (on a scale from 1 to 5) of each lecture topic was conducted. 55 out of 70 students responded and a summary of the results is shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Summary of the survey results of the lectures of SEEM 4066

Lectures 3, 4 and 5 related to innovation and advanced technologies apparently earned higher marks among all lectures. Table 2 shows that the rating of Lectures 3, 4 and 5 are higher than that of Lectures 1, 2, 7 and 8 in general. The rating of Lectures 6 and 9 are more diverse. The topics for Lectures 3, 4 and 5 are more about up-to-date innovation management and advanced technology, whereas the other topics in Lectures 1, 2, 7 and 8 were more about traditional engineering disciplines. The topics for Lectures 6 and 9 were related to careers representing entrepreneurship and startup, and project management.

After that, principal component analysis (PCA) was employed to (i) reduce the dimensionality of the results into two principal components and (ii) calculate the similarity between lectures. It was separated into industry-oriented and technology-oriented fields. Some students like topics about innovation management and advanced technology (Lectures 3, 4 and 5) as well as Lecture 6 that indicates the students’ preference to be entrepreneurs and startup founders. Another student group liked traditional industry topics (Lectures 1, 2, 7 and 8), who also rated project management (Lecture 9) higher (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: PCA of SEEM 4066 lectures

Limitations of real-time online teaching

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, many professors have been required to teach real-time online classes. However, several limitations were observed:

i) In order to monitor the study progress, many different quizzes were designed for students from different courses. Most students gave their feedback that they had too much coursework and their lectures’ workloads also increased.
ii) Students felt that professors did not respond helpfully in the chat box during the class. The scenario was different from that of face-to-face classroom teaching. Direct reply to students could not be given and wholeclass discussions were not possible. During online chats, students seldom voiced out their questions in public and they preferred to ask questions privately. It could be difficult to reply the students one by one when several questions were fired away at the same time in private chats. Also, the students did not know their questions might have been raised by some others.
iii) Regarding team project presentations, students had to submit a 15-minute video but real-time discussions were not carried out. Thus, comments to each team could only be given through the university system. Next time, all videos shall be collected first and then in class video presentations shall be arranged. As a result, discussions could be conducted after videos were played for better time management. Other students could also participate in the discussion or learn from other teams.

Conclusions

After the revamp of SEEM 4066, its syllabus contains more up-to-date knowledge including industrial policy, innovation, technology management and advanced technology. The survey presented in Table 2 demonstrates that those state-of-the-art technologies received students’ appreciation. However, students were found unfamiliar with industrial policies in both Hong Kong and the PRC. In addition, they would like to explore new things (see Figures 2a and 2b) and experience with innovative thinking. In the personal development essay, most students stated that they were interested in “entrepreneurship and startup” but they would require more experience and capital before establishing their own businesses. Based on PCA, students were separated into
two types: industry-oriented and technology-oriented.

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed changes and it will not stop soon. Many countries’ workforces would be working solely from home including those in the education industry. Even though educators and students will sooner or later return to classroom, a new norm has been established that online and offline teaching will be implemented together. Engineering students will face new challenges not only during their university studies, but also when they start working in society.

References

1. List of Engineering Degree Programmes Accredited by HKIE at CityU
Retrieved from https://hkie.org.hk/en/quali/program_detail/95/
2. BEng in Systems Engineering and Management (BESEM)
Retrieved from https://www.cityu.edu.hk/seem/prg-bengsem.htm
3. Lai, Lotto K.H. 2016. “Feature Articles: Quality Innovation - Part 1: Transformation of Quality Innovation in Hong Kong”, HKSQ 30th Anniversary Publication, pp 34 - 37. Retrieved from http://www.hksq.org/HKSQ-30th-Anniversary-booklet-web.pdf
4. Lai, Lotto K.H. 2019. “QMS based Innovation Management using Extension Innovation Methodology” Proceedings of the 17th ANQCongress in Bangkok, Thailand, ANQ1-003/HK-1.
5. Lai, Lotto K.H. 2018. “Quality Innovation: From i4.0 to Q4.0.” The 3rd World Summit for Chinese Quality, Session A/HKSQ-1, 8 November 2018.
6. Lai, Lotto K.H. 2017. “Implementing the Quality Startup Management System model in Hong Kong: a case study.” International Journal of Quality Innovation, 3:4. 
Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40887-017-0013-x
7. Merrill, P. 2015. Innovation never stops: Innovation generation - The culture, process, and strategy, Milwaukee: ASQ Quality Press, 2015.