How do we use labs to enhance employability skills?

This blog post comes from Dr Chalak Omar, a University Teacher in MEE who leads sessions in the Diamond Pilot Plant, a realistic industrial setting experienced by our chemical engineering and bioengineering students.

Practical activities at MEE do not only involve providing hands on experience, but also the skills required to make students industry-ready. Some of our activities focus on improving the students’ employability, and help them develop the skills required in their life after the University.  A good example of this are practical activities which utilise the Diamond Pilot Plant (DiPP). The facilities at the DiPP include industrial rigs, which are used in pharmaceutical and bioengineering technologies (Figure 1). These rigs are heavily used in both undergraduate and postgraduate taught curricula to provide group-based open-ended practical sessions, which deal with up-to-date challenges in industrial settings. The skills addressed in these sessions include planning, team working, leadership, problem solving, critical analysis, time management and communication skills.

Figure 1: ConsiGma25 Continuous Tabletting line (CTL) used during the practical sessions.

The activities in these sessions are designed in a way to shift the responsibility from the teacher to the students and allow students to direct and lead their learning process. It involves providing teams with scenarios based on realistic challenges in industry. The teams start by pre-planning their sessions, identifying the parameters of interest and then setting the critical process parameters. In this stage, students have to think about their plan carefully, considering the time and material constraints, which in turn helps them develop some time management skills. 

Their next step is to attend the lab to execute the plan and collect the required data. Once in the lab, students might be required to adjust their plan as a result of the equipment limitations and their chosen parameter interaction. However, they will only find out these challenges while executing the plan in the lab. The students can then amend and improve their plan and then implement the changes during the session.

The procedure mentioned above (Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, Figure 2) is a four-step model used as a project-planning tool that in many industries as a process for continuous improvement. The PDCA is usually used when starting a new improvement project, or working towards continuous improvement in existing projects.

Figure 2: The Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle

In addition to the project management skills gained during these practical sessions, students will also gain extensive hands on experience on how to work with and operate an industrial scale rig. The data collected from these sessions will be critically analysed by students and will be used to write technical reports, which help improve their communication skills. 

Exposing students to the PDCA process and providing them with the extensive hands-on experience with the additional skills on how to plan and conduct experiments, leadership, team working and data management and analysis will improve their employability skills and make them ready for life after University.