Encouraging students to identify and maintain competency records

This paper reports on a project funded by the Higher Education Academy Engineering Subject Centre in the UK. The project started in January 2011. The project formed part of wider research into how successfully SE (Systems Engineering) can be taught at undergraduate levels. The project reported here considered the ability of undergraduate SE students to identify and record SE competencies, building on recent work completed by INCOSE. It investigated how SE competencies may be enhanced or developed throughout an undergraduate course and industrial placement, and further whether undergraduate students recognize and record such development. This paper presents the findings of the project and proposes a simple mechanism to identify and map SE competencies throughout an undergraduate course.