Research & Development

My research is very much application and development driven. Early on in my teaching career, I wondered why the education of engineers was predominantly content-driven and why we did not apply the same rigour to the design of engineering education as we did to the design and research in aerospace. This is how I discovered the field of Engineering Education Research and developed a passion for research and evidence-based curriculum development in this multi-disciplinary field with the aim to provide a better learning environment for engineering students and life-long learners in engineering. This page highlights some examples of successful research and development projects. I am always open to sharing expertise or to collaborations. Do drop me a line using the contact form or email me!

Assessment & Pedagogies

RAPIDE Project: Relevant assessment and pedagogies for inclusive digital education

The RAPIDE project is an Erasmus+ - KA2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practice, KA226 - Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness.

The aim of the project is co-create, implement and share innovative pedagogies and aligned assessment for relevant and inclusive digital education in order to deal with the COVID-19 induced and similar crises and to support meaningful digital transformation of HEIs. Within the project I was responsible for the Assessment deliverables, Within our LDE-CEL team we published a literature review on Peer Assessment, Peer Assessment design workshops and we contributed to the Open Online E-course Let's get Flipped!

Transversal Skills

PREFER Project: Professional Roles and Employability of Future Engineers

The PREFER project was an Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance

co-funded by the European Union (575778-EPP-1-2016-1-BE-EPPKA2-KA 2017-2020) which aimed to reduce the skills mismatch in the field of engineering. Young engineering graduates often display a lack of self-awareness of who they are as an engineer. The PREFER project created tools and OCW curriculum elements to help engineering students/graduates with identifying and working t improve their strengths and weaknesses, and enabling them to actively explore the wide variety of engineering roles in the labour market.

Curriculum Development

Life-Long Online Learning in Aerospace Engineering

In 2012, TU Delft granted the Aerospace Structures and Materials Department a €100,000 to pilot offering online MSc courses to industry professionals. As the project manager, an engaging, constructively aligned, interactive programme of Aerospace Structures and Materials courses and a vision on online Aerospace Engineering Education was created, in collaboration with my colleagues, serving both lifelong learners and on-campus students. The programme inspired other departments in aerospace to get involved and I was proud to help make Aerospace Engineering TU Delft's largest supplier of online courses for professionals at the time. In addition, the project also yielded more than 6 academic publications until 2022.

Curriculum Development

Redesigning MSc Degree in Aerospace Structures & Materials

Working from the principle of Diana Laurillard that "teaching is a design science" and extending this to curriculum design is nothing more than a simple engineering design challenge with the structure the scaffolding of the education system of the country in situ, the boundary conditions the local regulations and requirements of the institute in situ and the market analysis comprises of the needs of future employers, students and society as a whole, a constructively aligned 2-year MSc curriculum in Aerospace Structures and Materials was created, which is still running today with little changes, some 7 years after its start, and has resulted in a decrease of average study length by more than 1 year.

Teaching Innovations

The Use of Peer Evaluations & Rubrics in Engineering Design Projects

One of the first innovations in Engineering Education, I implemented early in my career at Aerospace Engineering was the introduction of Rubrics-based Peer and Self Evaluations in Engineering Design Projects in the Bachelor. Students are often not used to working in (international and diverse) groups and are also uncomfortable assessing each other and themselves. By using descriptive rubrics students were asked to reflect on themselves and their teammates. This system of peer and self-evaluations is still in use today, more than 15 years on, and have been implemented at other faculties within TU Delft and wider afield. As an extension, constructively aligned rubrics were created to ensure uniformity of assessment in team-based design projects and assist in assessing the 1,000+ aerospace students doing design projects at aerospace each year.