CQU's dynamic duo Prue Howard and Yvonne Toft have received the Excellence in Engineering Education - Curriculum Innovation award for their work on their long term project Virtuous Reality: A model for transdisciplinary teaching and learning. The award was presented at the recent joint Australasian Association for Engineering Education (AaeE) Annual Awards held at Star City in Sydney.

There was an international audience as the awards night was the final event of a combined American Society of Engineering Education/AaeE International Colliquium on Engineering Education. Prue and Yvonne received much interest from other Australian and US universities.

The award citation mentions that: Yvonne and Prue have been collaborating across the Arts, Health & Science and Engineering & Physical Systems faculties for about 9 years. Their collaboration on Safe Design innovation has won the respect of the Victorian Coroner, Graeme Johnston, who notes that it is the only example of such sustained, and therefore intellectually credible, collaboration across disciplines he has been able to find. He is now working with Yvonne and Prue to develop further materials for industry/community engagement.

Engineering Dean Professor Elizabeth Taylor said CQU had shown great strength in developing interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary/transdisciplinary activities.

"From my perspective, this collaboration and others we are developing with Business & Law and InfoCom has enabled our Faculty and CQU to establish strong credibility in industry which is now translating into active industry collaboration both in teaching and learning and research," she said.

This curriculum innovation had its beginnings as far back as 1996 as an action research project that developed and promoted synergy between the disciplines of engineering and ergonomics in two undergraduate courses, Mechanical Systems Design and Human Factors.

The project has evolved through a number of cycles to a transdisciplinary team and communication model that not only incorporates project-based learning, in distance mode, but also uses linked assessment for the two courses pertaining to common learning outcomes which reflect both disciplinary and generic graduate attributes.

The latest cycle has consisted of a web-based learning community for the engineering and ergonomics students plus other allied professionals, and an online learning resource centre for engineering educators “Creating designs fit for people”. This is at http://peopledesign.cqu.edu.au .

The team has published widely in the area over the last few years and in so doing have demonstrated the high level of relevance, practicality and forward thinking perspective that they bring to the area of study.

Photos: Prue Howard and Yvonne Toft receive their award and congratulations from Professor Taylor.