Close the gap: How can design of learning environments shape engineering students' professional identity and prepare them for workplace?

Engineering educators are under increasingpressure to provide university students with learningexperiences that prepare them for the work after graduation.To understand how educational design can close the gapbetween engineering education and industry, we need tounderstand learners’ professional identity practices. Inparticular, how these practices are shaped by the design oflearning materials, learning spaces and learning events.Previous research provides little insight into such relations. Weaddress this gap in two ways. First we propose a new concept ofimplied identity. Second, we illustrate and discuss implicationsof the proposed conceptualization of professional identity bydrawing on a set of interviews conducted with engineeringstudents in an Australian university with the aim ofinvestigating their perceptions of engineering and unfoldingaspects of their professional beliefs in relation to theirexperiences at two universities and industry.