The need for improved knowledge management practices in higher education has long been acknowledged in the educational literature. This need is nowadays even more pertinent to engineering education because of the continuously changing contexts for educating future engineers. Project-based learning dealing with key aspects of product design and realization has been acknowledged by many academic institutions around the world as an appropriate means in the training of adaptable, reliable and responsive engineering students.
It is proposed and maintained in this paper that the establishment of systematic practice in the definition of project-based design modules can have a central role in enhancing knowledge management in engineering education. To this end, Reflection Space–MP is introduced as an approach that can support academic staff to ensure that the content material of their design modules can be demonstrably aligned with a number of academic, industrial and societal needs.
The paper details the key six L&T aspects of Reflection Space–MP and gives examples from its application for the planning of a new project-based engineering design module for Level 1 Mechanical Engineering students. Application of Reflection Space–MP has shown that it can serve as framework that can ensure that key planning perspectives of L&T have been considered and evidenced. As a result, actions for the definition, delivery and administration of a module can be determined in a systematic, evidenced and traceable manner.