Assessing the awareness of risk concepts by new engineering students

There is an indication that across higher-education engineering courses in the UK, the extent and content of risk education varies, and is not always commensurate with the level of risk that undergraduates could be responsible for in their subsequent professional lives. Consequently, a project was set up to incorporate risk education into the curriculum of an undergraduate engineering course in a UK university for the 2005/06 academic year. A set of learning outcomes was developed from a template of topic areas in consultation with key stakeholders. These learning outcomes formed the basis of a questionnaire that was designed to assess students' awareness of risk issues. This paper describes the development of the questionnaire, the interpretation of the results, and how the questionnaire will be used to help achieve the desired learning outcomes.