EESTEC's Academic Aspect Evaluation 2019

EESTEC

STATISTICS 2018/2019

About the brochure Dear EESTECers, Not a long time ago, Statistics Team released a form regarding our Association’s Academic Aspect and asked you to fill it in order to provide us with your opinion on that matter. Your response to our effort and our reminders was tremendous, as 201 EESTECers filled the form, providing us with enough answers to work on with and extract results!

So we would like to start this off by saying a big THANK YOU for helping us with our attempt to evaluate the situation there is when it comes to our Academic Aspect!

The results of the form can be used in a variety of ways, which can be finding the topic of a Commitment’s workshop, finding points to focus on when structuring the workshop, improving their quality and avoiding potential mistakes.

Under no circumstances should topics, who do not seem to interest that many people, be erased from your minds when thinking about potential topics; that would severely limit our diversity and could result in a circle of specific topics covered.

They can also help our next board(s) in their quest of directing our brand name towards the technical aspect, as they can find potential project or team ideas and either create the implemen-

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tation themselves or make a working session for that matter.

We are pretty sure that this form can help out in many other ways, just let your imagination flow and ask the proper questions to yourselves; what do you want to extract from the data provided. It will work, and if you find yourselves in a dead end or have any sort of questions in general, regarding the form and the results, do not hesitate to contact us in the following e-mail addresses: data-board@eestec.net || statistics-coordinator@eestec.net Happy reading!

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Agenda This form covered 3 parts: General Questions, where each and every student, no matter the year of studies, EE&CS or not, had to rate some topics of EE&CS with respect to their personal interest.

Workshops, where people who have been participants of at least a Workshop answered some questions regarding what makes them most intrigued to apply to a workshop academic-wise, their most anticipated part of a workshop, the topic of the workshop(s), some suggestions for content improvement and amount of knowledge gained during the workshop. Worth mentioning, the first couple of questions were answered by everybody. For people who have attended 3 or more workshops, they had to pick their best, their worst and a third one to answer the questions.

International, where the questions were answered by everyone. The content was to rate EESTEC’s academic related acts, as well as the amount of knowledge accumulated. Finally, there were questions that had to do with improving our academic side and the question of where is our association more directed towards.

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General Questions As foretold, 201 people filled this form, and here you can see how they are distributed regarding the year of studies and EE&CS vs non EE&CS. An important fact worth mentioning is that 99 out of 201 people have never been in a workshop, which translates to 49.2% of the total number of people. Also, these results can be quite credible for EE&CS related outputs, as more than 83% are EE&CS students.

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In the next few pages, rankings of the topics are shown.

Apart from the topics that were included in the form, it appears that EESTECers, are interested in: 5G, Deep Learning, Entrepreneurship, Nuclear Technologies & Engineering and Principles on Software Engineering, topics which cover various and different fields and an even wider range of applications.

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Topics Rating Out of the topics that were rated, the most popular one is by far Artificial Intelligence, followed by Machine Learning, Virtual/Augmented Reality and IoT. As we can see, more programming oriented topics are being preferred, which are also the current trend, as well as hot topics in the industry world. Another reason may be the fact that the majority of EESTECers, in general, are more into Computer Science rather than Electrical or Electronics Engineering, thus reflecting on the results.

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It comes as no surprise to see the 5 hottest topics being reflected in the EE&CS students’ answers, as the topics they had to rate are EE&CS oriented and those students make up for about 83% of the answers. What is kind of surprising, however, is the fact that AI, IoT and Machine Learning are still top 3 in the non-EE&CS students’ interests, joined by Renewable Energy and 3D Modelling/Printing.

It is worth mentioning that those 3 topics have an extremely wide range of applications in numerous fields, hence they are still considered interesting amongst everyone.

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The most averagely interesting topic is MEMS, followed by Embedded Systems, 3D Modelling/Printing, Power Electronics and Industrial Automations, where it is visible that there is a bigger diversity in what is perceived as an average topic of the EE&CS field. That can be attributed to Curriculums that exist in each faculty, that give some basic knowledge on some more general EE&CS topics, resulting in no particular interest or non-interest in students.

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While those are perceived as “OK” topics, it is a little bit surprising that the top 5 least interesting topics are MEMS, Power Electronics, Industrial Automations, Renewable Power and Biomedical Technologies. This can be explained due to the more specialized nature of those topics, as they can be described as “love them or hate them” and of course due to the more Computer Science oriented students who are part of EESTEC. Regarding the age groups of students, the top 3 most popular topics remain as they are for the younger and middle age categories, while the older students (5+ year of studies) consider IoT as the most interesting topic and highly regard Image Processing. The youngest ones tend to like web/mobile development a lot and the Masters/PhD students have Cyber Security, along with Artificial Intelligence as their most favourable topics, probably due to the fact that it is a highly demanding topic.

One more time, this is just a research that tries to assess our Association’s current situation and not encourage Commitments to try and focus on the most popular topics. It is encouraged to offer as much diversity as possible when it comes to workshops and to set up workshops of the highest academic quality as possible. Each Commitment has some resources, be it companies, University Professors and Lecturers, Alumni members etc in some topics and they should be utilized in an optimal way.

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Workshops There is a proportion between the reasons that make EECS and non EECS Students to choose a workshop.

EECS Students are being intrigued mostly by the General Topic of the event, following by Curiosity about something new and the Field of Application, while by non EECS Students, the first two reasons are equally important. Both categories seems to be less intrigued by the way the workshop is promoted.

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According to the year of studies of the participants, it appears that there are similarities between the answers. Irrespective of the year of studies, General Topic is the thing that intrigues the students about a workshop. It is followed by Curiosity About Something New and the Field of Application. Interesting fact is that, the Way the Workshop Is Promoted is considered to be the least intriguing aspect, comparing with the other three.

There seems to be no difference depending on the number of workshops someone has participated in, regarding the things that they find most intriguing. It is the exact order as the norm for year of studies.

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Regarding the most anticipated part of a Workshop, the most popular option in every category is the Practical exercises/Lab experiment, as 88% of participants consider it a valuable topic. More advanced examples of use is in second place, as 38% of people look forward to it.

Company or professor lectures and Research results/uses are roughly the same in terms of popularity, for every third person it is part they are eager to see.

The younger half of the age groups is more eager to know about Research results rather than watch a Company or Professor lecture, as opposed to the older half.

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Here we can see that a good amount of people who have never been to a workshop look forward to seeing More Advanced examples of use of the topic presented and it is never the least anticipated topic. We can assume that people are anticipating to see more practical sections rather than theoretical and widen their horizons by getting to know more advanced uses, which could translate into future professional use by their side Generally, before utilizing these graphs as information, we would strongly suggest you to check the more specific target group you want to aim age-wise and try to find some resources to provide the best result possible.

Diversity and great academic quality are always encouraged!

Other anticipated things are: Combination with other fields of engineering, possible job opportunities, working in a team towards a goal, building/designing something, learning through creating, visiting industrial areas or companies and access to devices/technologies that someone would not be able to see normally.

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In total, the majority of people categorise the knowledge the accumulated during an event as Some things and Quite a few, while only a tiny percentage of people declared that they learned nothing.

Regarding the number of workshops attended, it appears that as the number gets bigger, the answers are slightly shifted from Some things to Quite a few, always keeping the initial analogy. Also, people who have participated in more than one workshop, tend to learn A Lot from them.

As it seems, people are really eager to compete during a workshop, but did not get the chance, while collaborating and having professional lectures is also highly regarded but not seen. Hackathons are not highly regarded, most likely due to their lengthy and demanding nature.

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International When it comes to the level of academic related acts provided by EESTEC, we can clearly see that no matter the study group of participants, it is considered as medium, with a total average score of 3.36/5. Same thing can be observed when looking at the ratings from the year of studies side.

As expected, the least demanding category is the youngest one, something that makes sense, as people in their first two years tend to not have as concrete knowledge as the older ones.

Coming from the average, it is also expected that all of the categories have placed most of their votes in the 3/5 mark.

An interesting fact is that if we completely exclude the youngest people, the average further drops to 3.19/5!

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As far as the amount of EE&CS related knowledge that has been accumulated throughout EESTEC activities, then the results are a bit below average, at 2.86/5.

We can see that the graphs follow the same trend as the previous ones, but the key element that pulls the average rating below 3/5 is the increased number of 1/5 given.

Obviously, the older someone is, the more demanding he or she is, as the ratings tend to be below 3 rather than above. But a definitely non negligible amount of younger people consider the amount of accumulated knowledge to be exceptionally small.

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Suggestions Coming from these two graphs, we can see that, as expected, EE&CS and non EE&CS students tend to think differently when it comes to what more they would like to see from EESTEC. While EE&CS students focus more on having more job opportunities, more Advanced Skills Workshops and a higher quality of Workshops, non-EE&CS would much rather see more diversity on academic inputs, online tutorials demonstrations from EESTEC and an EESTEC wide competition on a particular topic.

Both categories tend to agree that not everything is just right, as this option gathered very few votes on both occasions. Also, they seem content enough with the inputs on our social media.

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When we look at this topic from the Year of Studies side, we can see that all of the categories, besides Masters and PhD Students would like to see more job opportunities.

Younger people have in high regard online tutorials from EESTEC and would also like to have a higher quality of Workshops. It is also quite predictable that the bulk of people that think everything is just right come from the youngest portion of students, most likely again due to their lack of experience in EE&CS topics. They also seem to discourage having more academic inputs on social media.

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Regarding the older students, both agree that we need more job opportunities provided and more Advanced Skills Workshops, as they are the ones who can bring students closer to the job industry by training them to hard skills that will be useful in their workplace. This makes sense, as those two categories are very similar in terms to how close they are to finding a proper job as EE&CS graduates.

Interestingly enough, PhD Students tend to focus more on obtaining the skills via those Workshops rather than finding job opportunities via EESTEC. They also regard highly online tutorials, probably with the same thought process of obtaining skills. But they seem not to believe raising the quality of the Workshops, as opposed to students in their fifth year or so.

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Orientation

Finally, people were asked to give their input regarding the orientation of our association. As we can see, more than half of the people consider Soft Skills as our Association’s focal point, while a bit less than a quarter see fun as the main orientation. The technical aspect is definitely not a main point from the people’s perspective, as it accumulates 8.96% of the total votes, being tied with people who have no opinion. Regarding balance, less than 6% believe that there is balance between hard skills, soft skills and fun. Besides non EE&CS students (who consider fun as number 1), no matter the year of studies people are in, Soft Skills are considered as the aspect that EESTEC focuses on the most.

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As we can see, non EECS students consider our academic orientation clearly trivial and focus mostly on the fun aspect. EE&CS students tend to view Soft Skills as number one and have a better view in our technical aspect, but clearly, the 10% mark is quite a small amount. (17/169 people).

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Similarly to the whole International Academic spectrum, young students tend to be a lot more lenient when it comes to evaluating that particular topic. This is totally visible here as well, because over 16% of this age group rated our academic aspect as the main point of orientation, while every other age group had percentages of around 6%!

What is also very interesting is that 16% of people in their fifth year of studies consider EESTEC as a balanced organization, while Masters and PhD students see no balance at all!

You can see those graphs in the next page.

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Closing Remarks With this, our analysis for EESTEC’s academic aspect is done.

We tried to cover this topic as extensively as possible and from as many angles as possible and these were the results.

A lot of useful information can be extracted from this brochure and for a variety of issues, such as Workshop topic selection, future moves when it comes to our Academic focus both locally and internationally and so on. We certainly hope that you will find some interest and use in our work and hopefully you will benefit from that! Yet again, if you are unsure when it comes to translating the data to information or action, or even if you want something more in terms of analysis, do not hesitate to contact us in the e-mails at the start of the brochure; we will be more than eager to help you out!

We can all agree that there are many things to do in order to raise our academic level as an association, and while there is quite some way to go, we have a good starting point with these results. What we can suggest is not to deny the other two aspects of our Association, but rather try and focus on improving the academic aspect while keeping Soft Skills and Fun as a part of it.

In the end of the day, EESTEC is made by the people in it, the people are the ones that make it as they want it to be. And while improving may sound hard, all it needs is that first step and the will to actually do something. Results will definitely be there, as long as we seek them.

On behalf of Data Team and Statistics Team.

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The Team

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Data Team

Statistics Team