Case Study of a New Student Engineering Education Research Group

Engineering Education Research can benefit greatly from using the voices of its undergraduate engineering student beneficiaries to inform pedagogical developments. To this end, the University of Bristol's Engineering Education Research Group established its student branch in the 2022–23 academic year with two core motivations: to encourage students to co-create educational projects with staff, and to stimulate student interest in research-based careers. This short paper describes the development of the Student En-gineering Education Research Group and reports on its progress in the 2022–23 academic year. An evaluation of the pilot year was conducted using informal discussions and a survey of student members. Results of this qualitative analysis identified three main themes, and were used to identify areas for improvement in 2023–24. Changes made included providing focused projects for students to select, and running project-specific meetings more regularly to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of the student group for its second year of operation.