Abstract:

Successfully integrating industry expertise into an academic curriculum appears at the surface to be a straightforward process, however, in our experience, this has not been the case. After three years of development and trying several different models of delivery, we have settled on a workable model for integrating industry expertise into the academic curriculum that satisfies both industry as well as academic moderators. This paper reports on the development and delivery of a set of courses having as its focus, infrastructure asset management specifically for an engineering degree apprenticeship. The content of the curriculum as well as the delivery has been developed by a professionally invested group of asset managers, drawn from across the country. While educational guidance was provided to shape the course development so that it fitted the standard academic structure of the institution, all content, learning activities and assessments were co-developed with the lecturer as a collaborative partnership and implemented with the subject matter experts (SMEs) drawn from industry to deliver the core learning each session.

Feedback from both students engaged with the course as well as the new “industry-based teaching cohort” suggests that this model has worked well so far. This model can be applied to the development of other degree apprenticeship pathways to include construction, power, roading, water and waste engineering as well as the proposed Graduate Diploma in Asset Management. This model is already opening asset management learning options to a wider range of professionals involved in asset stewardship outside of engineering.

Keywords:

Work integrated learning, infrastructure, asset management, engineering, industry-based teaching, subject matter expertise.