Introduction

Engineering is fundamentally about designing or optimising things, be they tangible or conceptual. The requirement to test objects or ideas through experimentation is a necessary requirement within any engineering process. It is widely acknowledged that experimentation is an integral part of engineering training and as such deserves a platform to openly discuss best practices.

Practical Engineering Education is a conference that aims to bring together specialists from across the world to exchange idea and best practice on the teaching of practical engineering to students in further and higher education. The focus will be on prototyping, testing, experimentation, validation and any other laboratory related teaching.

The state of the art in Engineering Education often involves the introduction of real world and problem based approaches. Testing is part of a design cycle, along with making and evaluating so practical engineering education needs to find effective methods to ensure it is holistic integrated into the programme.

While the conference is targeted at practical engineering education, the significant crossover with laboratory teaching in science and other disciplines provides the opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge. Practical teaching from other disciplines can inform engineering education, and vice versa, allowing practitioners to learn from one another.

The suspension of face to face teaching due to the pandemic created challenges for delivering practical teaching. Overcoming these challenges has generated renewed interest in how and why practical teaching is included in engineering curricula. PEE will be an opportunity to rethink the way we set targets where best practice can be shared, discussed and built on to push forwards the quality of practical teaching within HE.