Visions of the Future of Engineering Education: Sharpening the Focus (original) (raw)
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The future of engineering education
2002
Thirteen engineering educators and researchers were each asked to choose a particular aspect of engineering's future to address. Each of the authors has contributed a short piece that has been edited into a discussion of the future as we collectively see it. Topics include the stimulating change, the changing university, teaching, learning, research, outcome assessment and technology as well as a look back at predictions for 2000. Session T4A 0-7803-7444-4/02/$17.00 © 2002 IEEE November 6 -9, 2002, Boston, MA 32 nd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference T4A-2
Faculty perspectives on Future Engineering Education
9th Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES 2021) and 32nd Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference (REES AAEE 2021)
New societal challenges have emerged, and the Sustainable Development Goals present a concise summary of the engineering grand challenges (National Academy of Engineering, 2007). Further, the global society face challenges such as digitalization, future sustainable development and industry 4.0 engineering education is expected to respond by educating engineers with the relevant knowledge and competences useful in dealing with these complex problems both in terms of technology, climate and society (Kolmos, 2021). Engineers need to see themselves as global citizens embracing the human challenges, and engineering institutions need to prepare graduates to be able to work on solutions to these complex problems. Future engineers need to understand the impact of new technologies both on an individual level as well as at a systemic and societal level. Not least to understand how technologies can contribute to solutions for future complex societal problems. The question is how engineering education will respond? What are the strategies for developing the academic disciplines and the future engineering competence profiles, and which changes emerge in curriculum when adapting to future emerging technologies and complex problem solving? Five Nordic Universities have participated in this study (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). From each university four professors have been interviewed. The professors represent four different engineering disciplines: mechanical engineering, civil engineering, biotechnology and energy engineering. These disciplines are common engineering disciplines, offered at the selected universities. All engineering education in the Nordic countries follow the Bologna structure with three year Bachelor and two year Master education. The aim of this study is to study and compare how different faculties anticipate and predict future changes within their discipline. The findings indicate that there are differences among the four disciplines. The engineering programs with a more core science component such as energy and bio technology anticipate less differences in the future curriculum compared to mechanical and civil engineering. All disciplines anticipate that emerging technologies such as big data and AI will influence the curriculum, and especially production/mechanical and civil engineering also point out new learning objectives like systems understanding. Having in mind that engineering education is a broad field the aim of this study is not to highlight a single coherent outcome but to highlight approaches and understandings for how to prepare future engineering education from an engineering faculty perspective.
The future of engineering education I. A vision for a new century
… Engineering Education, 2000
When we walk into an arbitrarily chosen engineering classroom in 2000, what do we see? Too often the same thing we would have seen in 1970, or 1940. The professor stands at the front of the room, copying a derivation from his notes onto the board and repeating aloud what he writes. The students sit passively, copying from the board, reading, working on homework from another class, or daydreaming.
Future Directions in Engineering Education: Educating Engineers of the 21st Century
Engineering schools today are facing challenges they have never faced before to produce graduates who are relevant in the 21st Century. Today's engineers are entering into a world marked by rapid and global change, exponential advancement in information and computer technologies, complex ethical issues, borderless global competition, changing demographics, sustainability, and a multitude of problems that only emerged in the new millennium. Just as business as usual will not survive in the 21st Century, education as usual will also not get us there. This paper briefly explores challenges in global engineering practice in the 21st Century, before laying down the status quo in engineering education. From here, based on numerous engineering education reports that have emerged from various parts of the world, the requirements as well as issues to overcome in educating engineers of the future will be dwelled.
Using an international survey to inform scenarios of the future of engineering education
25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education : Engineering the Knowledge Economy: Collaboration, Engagement & Employability, 2014
BACKGROUND Technological, economic, and social changes will reshape undergraduate engineering education, but there is little consensus on its future. IEEE created a Curricula and Pedagogy Committee (CPC) and charged it with forecasting the future of engineering education in general and specifically to make recommendations regarding roles that IEEE will play in preparing for and crafting that future. The IEEE CPC used scenario planning to consider possible trends in engineering education and is opening its thoughts to public scrutiny. The IEEE CPC developed a survey to compare scenarios that it developed with patterns formed from respondents' views of the future. PURPOSE The CPC Committee functions as a research team seeking to learn (1) what is the current state of practice in higher education programs in fields of interest for IEEE?, (2) how are engineering programs forecasting practices that need to be in place to meet the needs of the profession in 10 years?, and (3) what services and collaborations might transform current practice to meet those needs? DESIGN/METHOD A survey was developed by the IEEE CPC. To examine how engineering programs might innovate and adapt, the survey included questions about current and future instructional practices and uses of instructional technologies. To examine values and competencies of engineering academics, the survey included questions that addressed skills that students have now and those they should have in the future as well as the roles that evaluation of teaching played in evaluating faculty members. The survey was deployed in July-August 2014 to individuals who (1) teach undergraduate students, (2) administer a degree program (i.e., Department Chairs and Heads), (3) serve as a top-level administrator over all engineering degree programs (i.e., Deans), and (4) work professionally in engineering. The results were compiled by IEEE Strategic Research and reported to the CPC for analysis. RESULTS This paper describes the demographics of the 2176 survey respondents. In addition, it reports on responses to the survey about teaching and quality versus quantity of engineers. An encouraging finding is that there is agreement among all types of respondents on the strategic priority of quality over quantity of engineers. CONCLUSIONS The congruence of our findings with expectations voiced by others, particularly in the area of teaching methods, indicates that the survey has validity and suggests that fields of interest to IEEE match the aggregate behaviour of engineering described in other work. The general congruence of responses across diverse respondents regarding the strategic priority of quality over quantity suggests that the field may be moving towards the more promising future scenarios. Results from the survey provide insight into the extent to which academics and industry professionals are expecting and contributing to the possible futures described in the scenario planning, which in turn provides insight as to how to prepare for whatever the future holds.
Future Global Visions of Engineering Education
Procedia Engineering, 2011
This article presents the future global visions of engineering education. Due to the socio-technological challenges, engineering education must anticipate and adapt to dramatic changes in terms of engineering practice and instruction. In the future, the roles of engineers must change along with the following aspects: the globalization of industry and engineering practice, the shift of engineering employment from large companies to small and mediumsized companies, the growing emphasis on entrepreneurialism, the growing share of engineering employment in nontraditional, less-technical engineering work, the shift to a knowledge-based "services" economy, and increasing opportunity for using technology in the education and work of the engineering. This study found that successful attributes for the engineering education graduates in 2020 must be at strong level. They are as follows: lifelong learners, ability to frame problems, putting them in a socio-technical and operational context, dynamic/agile/resilient/flexible, high ethical standards and a strong sense of professionalism, good communication skills with multiple stakeholders, possess strong analytical skills, exhibit practical ingenuity; posses creativity, and business and management skills; leadership abilities. Moreover, the study found that the problems which engineering education graduates in 2020 encounter and have strong ability to solve. They are as follows: maintaining technical currency & life long learning, environmental and energy related problems, managing globalization, problems related to population growth, ultra-nanoscale, miniaturization, and bioengineering and medical problems.
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TRANSFORMING ENGINEERING EDUCATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
This presentation will address questions like: What are the economic, social and technological challenges of today? What is the status of higher education today? Why do we need to innovate engineering/STEM education? What are the competencies needed to address the challenges and opportunities of the 21 st century? How can we address those needs and innovate the curriculum and the learning experiences to better serve society and prepare engineers? University-wide and engineering education/STEM suggestions are presented.
Trends in engineering education-Programs ' content , implementation to meet current challenges
2016
Many engineering issues cannot be addressed without profound knowledge of social and political dimensions, such as; energy supply, drinking water and preservation, mitigation of air and soil pollution, climate change, use of biotechnological potential in agronomy, food and medicine, closely interact with society, public sector and environment. Indeed, these topics are so complex that they must be treated by multidisciplinary teams with qualified members and where, each member is aware of concepts and approaches of others, while knowing that globalization produces major societal challenges with impacts flowing between and through borders in ways, we were unable to predict or expect. Also, engineering careers became more and more, entrepreneurial and global, while technological change pace has accelerated and expectations regarding engineering education have widened. Additionally, we know that scholarly and methodical improvement of engineering education are based on a continuous cycl...
Educating Future Engineers: An Example
Engineering education in the United States is going through a change, much of it driven by two recent reports from The National Academy of Engineering and the internationalization of the profession. This is a normal process of evolution in the education of future engineers to make them better prepared to be effective professionals in the environment they will face. As part of this evolution and the normal process of quality improvement, Wichita State University has recently launched a strategic initiative, Engineer of 2020. This paper reviews the background and the rationale for this initiative as well the implementation of it. Also discussed is the experience to date.