Feedback through student essay competitions: what makes a good engineering lecturer?

The Engineering Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy has run student essay competitions for some years. In 2007/08 the title was ‘What makes a good engineering lecturer?’. This paper presents an analysis of the 43 submissions, carried out to identify the most commonly cited attributes and to present quotes that convey the spirit of the essays. The same title had been used for the first competition in 2003/04, and the outcomes of the 2007/08 competition are compared with those previously published for the 2003/04 award. The attributes most commonly identified across both sets of essays are use of real-world examples, approachability, enthusiasm, diversity of media, and good communication.