Framework of experiential learning to enhance student engineering skill
Authors: Ghemri Fadi , Bouras Abdelaziz , Gasmi Houssem 
Published: June 2019

In this research work, we propose a framework of experiential learning to enhance student work skills and experience. This research main to contribute to the development and expansion of local industry, through the conduct of long-term fundamental research that contributes to the science base and understanding needs of national economy, through industrial by providing an adapted method to enhance the teaching contents and pedagogical organization to be more accurate and responding to the competency requirements of local employers. A vocational approach is a complicated process for universities since it is necessary to take into account a multiplicity of variables to establish a compromise between companies requirement and students competencies acquired during the university training. Academics expert (Teachers, researchers) should be careful to design the curriculum to balance between theory and practice in order to respond to workplace requirement, to bridge the gap and adequately prepare the students for the market. Such complexity requires close and continuous collaboration between industry and academia to build innovative solutions and develop new skills and competencies. Higher educational institutions need to reflect such an evolution in their training curricula. Trained students will be able to tackle real-world challenges efficiently. Collaboration approaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels between industry and academia showing how such collaborations increased the efficiency and effectiveness of the hired graduates and increased their employability. In terms of competent graduates, the elaboration of a competence-oriented curriculum and the respective implementation and organization are crucial, this method is based on cooperative and oriented learning, this approach needs an exchange between those responsible of the content and the industrial, this exchange must lead to a mutual understanding needs. To implement this strategy in Qatar context, we associate various types of research tools; collecting data regarding a several ethnographic perspective, local economic data, observations of different surrounding universities and local companies, interviews with academics and professional experts, etc. We also initiate some meeting in university with industrial and academic experts; indeed, we organized lately two workshops, during the first one, representatives from companies (Ooredoo, QAPCO, Qatar Airways, and IBM. Etc.) and academic experts, underlined the competency needs in IT field, especially the cyber-security subfield. The experts attest that it is crucial to have a local qualified labor to respond to a large increase of digital-based-economy and to reduce the dependency of expatriate experts; they also highlighted the importance of collaboration between university and industrial through the integrating internship during the master course curriculum. The last workshop was focused on Alumni; we estimated that their opinion is highly important because they are in the right position to give feedback about their experience regarding the adequacy of their academic training in their current occupations and to identify possible challenges and gaps they may have faced when they joined their workplaces. During the session, the list of industry requirements that was the output of the second workshop was further discussed and refined with Alumni and our industry, all this action are in order to involve the industrial as stakeholders and engage them in our perspective and to build new cooperative learning curricula. The establishments of an ecosystem where different stakeholders from Qatar industry and academia help us to contribute and discuss the pedagogical evolution of local education, particularly in IT and computing education, such a dialog is important for the evolution of the pedagogical curricula to adequately prepare future graduates for the challenges of the real world. Elaboration of the curriculum together with professionals from the business side can guarantee the update of the education method within the content of the curriculum. Modular structure with involvement in a company and a permanent interaction with the business can facilitate together, with up to date teaching methods. The results of the workshop and the discussion explained in more detail in the proposed poster. This work is part of the Qatar Foundation NPRP Pro-Skima research project.