Integrating Industry Seminars within a Software Engineering Module to Enhance Student Motivation

Engineering students increasingly demand and require coverage of emerging technologies to prepare themselves for subsequent research and employment. Industry and professional bodies are also concerned that engineering education doesn't always prepare students adequately for the world of work. The software engineering postgraduate professional practice module at University College London is designed to provide real-world experience, before students commence their industry research projects. Industry speakers are invited from a range of organizations, including ThoughtWorks, IBM, Form3, Verne Global, and Fujitsu. Seminars include: DevOps, microservices, cloud-native architectures, machine learning and quantum technologies. Before each topic is covered, students are asked their understanding of the subject matter, via questionnaires. This information is shared with industry speakers to ensure the content of presentations is compatible with students' prior knowledge. It has proved valuable to allow time for discussions to facilitate professional networking, which particularly benefits female students. Students have indicated they highly value the real-world project examples delivered by industry experts. This suggests that integrating industry seminars can enhance engineering education and motivate students by covering leading-edge technologies and practices. However, this requires considerable time in coordinating and codeveloping seminars, and such initiatives need to be adequately resourced to be effective.