The SEFI Francesco Maffioli Award of Excellence for Developing Teaching and Learning in Engineering Education

The call for candidates is also available in a PDF format.

You may nominate through this Application form.

Deadline for Nominations: 1^st April, 2018

Motivation & aim

Everywhere there are best-teacher awards, often organised by students, and that is a good thing. The Francesco Maffioli Award of Excellence is different. It focuses on the preparatory work done by educators that enables sustained learning to happen. The good teacher can make learning happen on the day. But the good material, the

good system, method or tool not only makes learning happen on that day, but also on the next day, in labs and classrooms, and is often used by other teachers also. The Francesco Maffioli Award of Excellence, established in honour of Prof. Francesco Maffioli of the Politecnico di Milano and former President of SEFI, is intended to highlight and celebrate such contributions to engineering education.

The award acknowledges an individual teacher, or a team of teachers, who has made a systematic and extraordinary effort to develop learning and teaching within Engineering Education. The effort could for example focus on the development of innovative curriculum, learning materials, learning environments, or tools, novel didactics, pedagogics, methods or systems. The award is bestowed at the SEFI Annual Conference.

Objectives

The award is granted to teachers who have made a special effort to initiate, investigate, document, and share experiences about development of their teaching and their students’ learning. The objectives are to encourage engineering educators to systematically and continuously investigate how various teaching methods support their students’ learning, to make special efforts to develop teaching and learning methods, to share and make new developments visible, and hereby to support the ongoing enhancement of the quality of teaching, learning and education at their institutions, in their regions or globally.

Recipients

The award is granted to individual teachers – or teams of teachers – who have made a special contribution to the development of their teaching to support and enhance their students’ learning.

Nomination guidelines and criteria for evaluation

Evaluation and selection will be based on the extent to which the nominee’s description of the development of learning and teaching in engineering education outlines

• Background and underlying ideas (rationale)
• National/regional/local context
• Sources of inspiration – e.g. existing knowledge, including references about university teaching/engineering education (Scholarship of Teaching & Learning)
• Applied teaching methods and grounds for choice of methods
• Methods for collection and analysis of evidence
• Results, including effects on student learning outcome
• Sharing / publication of results (seminars, conferences, journals)
• Significance for Engineering Education elaborating on local/regional/national/international applicability and impact

It is highly recommended to structure nominations along these themes. The word count of nominations should not exceed 1500 words (including a short motivation of the nominee and an abstract of max. 200 words).

Award

In addition to a scroll, there will be a prize of €750, free attendance to the SEFI Annual Conference, and a scheduled plenary presentation at the SEFI Annual Conference (one person, if a team wins).

Process

Nomination
Only the responsible management of SEFI institutional members can nominate candidates for the award. This management is the corresponding party with the Award Committee. Nominations (including supporting letter from the institutional management and descriptive material according to the nomination guidelines) must be sent in pdf format via email to:

• Martin E. Vigild (bachelordekan@dtu.dk), Chair of the Award Committee
• Mike Murphy (mike.murphy@dit.ie), SEFI President
• Françoise Côme (francoise.come@sefi.be), SEFI Secretary General

The Award Committee will evaluate nominations fairly and impartially and make a final recommendation to the SEFI Board of Directors for ratification. The deadline for nominations is 01 April 2018.

Assessment
By the award committee consisting of

• Greet Langie (KU Leuven)
• Sirin Tekinay (Sabanci University)
• John Mitchell (UCL)
• Luis Manuel Sanchez-Ruiz (UPV)
• Hannu-Matti Järvinen (Tampere UT)
• Martin E. Vigild (DTU) (Chair)

Further information
Contact the chair of the Maffioli award committee Martin E. Vigild (bachelordekan@dtu.dk ).