Currently reading: “Emerging learning environments in engineering education” by Hadgraft & Kolmos (2020)

In “Emerging learning environments in engineering education” by Hadgraft & Kolmos (2020), which my colleague recommended I read, the authors state that “engineering institutions might be falling behind in re-thinking the entire curriculum for educating students to handle complex situations. Most commonly, changes are made at the single course level which leads to a lack of alignment between the technological and societal developments and responses from the educational system“.

Which, I think, is a correct assessment. However, I strongly object to their claim that “Basically, the future is a result of the decisions that we have made in the past.” I agree with them in that “[earlier] decisions have led to existing practices, embodied in curriculum models, teaching and assessment methods, trends and discourses“, but that only has led to what is right now, and it has not yet determine the future. The future is wide open, it does not need to be a direct extrapolation from the past. If we believe that “patterns emerge in engineering education, that can give a hint towards the direction of engineering education in the future“, we are giving up agency. Why on Earth should we do that?

One trend that they observe in engineering education is from simplicity to complexity, where students look at different levels of difficult problems.

• Simple problems can be solved by sensing (i.e. recognizing a familiar problem), categorising it (as, or example, flow in a pipe), and responding (by applying the right equations to solve it). This very much reminds me of my first year physics classes.
• A complicated problem has potentially several “right” answers. Here, the steps are sensing, analysing, and responding.
• For complex problems (which they say are also called wicked problems, although my understanding of wicked problems is slightly different), it is not clear whether there is a good solution at all. “A key question is always: What problem are we solving?”
• Chaotic problems are even more complex than complex problems, because they are often caused by desaster and require immediate action to stabilise the situation. Once it is stable, it becomes a complex, complicated, or simple problem to solve.

The authors describe the scaffolding that needs to take place over the course of a study program: “However, as time goes by, students must be made aware of the complex situation in which they find themselves – to develop themselves and the competencies they will need for their intended careers. They need to act by sensing their emerging future career direction, probing for learning situations that align with their interests, and responding by seeking new learning opportunities in the following semester.” They state that while for learning within a single discipline the traditional module structure might be ok, but “to learn cross-disciplinarity, complexity, systems, and sustainability, requires a much more coordinated and integrated curriculum, crossing the traditional boundaries of single modules and disciplines.”

How has engineering education responded so far?

1. There has been an increase in active, student-centred learning (or at least a move away from being fully teacher-centred)
2. Contextual and practice-based learning are employed
3. Digital learning tools are on the rise (and remember, this was published in 2020 — a lot has happened on that since then!)
4. Personalised learning, focussed on professional competencies and documented in portfolios, is increasingly popular.

To be clear — all those four developments are probably positive. But when then a program where students learn in five-week sprints (four weeks teaching, one week project, repeat) is described as “the benefit of such a change process is that much of the teaching can remain fairly traditional, even if it is now technology enhanced“, “this is, potentially, not too disruptive to the teaching team (other than the loss of two weeks of the term)“, I really do not agree with the priorities here. Of course, the change process needs to happen in a way that ensures staff and student buy-in, and using formats that they recognise “from before” might help. But aren’t we lacking ambition here? I so often hear similar statements: “I can include this and don’t even need to change the learning outcomes!”, “it only costs me 90 minutes”, “I just invite a guest speaker as expert”. Especially when the conclusion is that “the competencies that must be embedded in curricula are: complexity, systems thinking and interdisciplinarity. This will require new kinds of curricula” — shouldn’t we then aim higher than at incremental changes along the path of a predetermined future, shouldn’t we dare to think outside of the box? At the same time, you need to know the rules in order to break them (or so they say), so it is good to know the state of the art. Then nobody needs to re-invent the wheel, and we can shape the future based on a good understanding of the present and how we got there!

Featured image: Walking towards a morning dip, where I could really swim towards the sun for the first time this year :-)

Hadgraft, R. G., & Kolmos, A. (2020). Emerging learning environments in engineering education. Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, 25(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/22054952.2020.1713522