How will the Fourth Industrial Revolution change the way we have to educate our engineers? What are your insights? Do you know great literature?

We are calling for a paradigm shift in engineering education. In times of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (“4IR”), a myriad of potential changes is affecting all industrial sectors leading to increased ambiguity that makes it impossible to predict what lies ahead of us. Thus, incremental culture change in education is not an option anymore. The vast majority of engineering education and training systems, having remained mostly static and underinvested in for decades, are largely inadequate for the new 4IR labor markets. Some positive developments in changing the direction of the engineering education sector can be observed. Novel approaches of engineering education already deliver distinctive, student-centered curricular experiences within an integrated and unified educational approach. We must educate engineering students for a future whose main characteristics are volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Talent and skills gaps across all industries are poised to grow in the years to come. Therefore, promote an engineering curriculum that combines timeless didactic tradition, such as Socratic inquiry, project-based learning, and first-principles thinking with novel elements (e.g. student-centered active and e-learning by focusing on the case study and apprenticeship pedagogical methods) as well as a refocused engineering skillset and knowledge. These capabilities reinforce engineering students’ perceptions of the world and the subsequent decisions they make. This 4IR engineering curriculum will prepare engineering students to become curious engineers and excellent communicators better navigating increasingly complex multistakeholder ecosystems.
What are your opinions?
What are your insights?
Do you know great articles or books which cover this topic well?
Many thanks for your perspective!
Parents
  • The Industy Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0) has already changed the way we must educate our Engineers. However, not every University has jumped on board. The main cause has been the lack of lecturers with ITC skills. So, the question is not how to educate our engineers but how to update current lectures and create the new lectures with ITC capabilities and hand on the job experience, rather than a Didactic Tradition. In addition, to prepare engineering students to become curious engineers and excellent communicators requires a different approach outside the curriculum such as self-awareness programs.
    Once the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) educational framework was considered to posses the right standards to create top engineers, however, with the development of the IR4.0, CDIO seems to become irrelevant. The digital transformation has fragmented the IR4.0 in many components of technology, such as; Twin Cities, Smart Cities, IoT. Ai, mobile devices, data, in manufacturing products dictated how they supposed to be produced.
    The term Engineer in the IR4.0 extends the qualification of a person beyond, design, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works. Therefore, the universal curriculum to educate an engineer will also need an update, each curriculum will have a set syllabus design for each component of IR4.0.
  • Hi Khushali, 

    This is Suparna from Bentley Systems. Your post is indeed a great read and very relevant to the present times. As far as your concern for the disproportionate ratio of skilled educators to the aspiring learners is concerned , I guess one reason could be the gap in the means and the curriculum of education that was practiced in the earlier generations and the nature of the knowledge that is prevalent in the current era. 

    The current demand is that of an amalgamation of in depth knowledge of traditional concepts combined with the aptitude of an IR4 eco-system . This in tandem with an acumen to apply the understandings would help us conceive ideas that advance our capacities/capabilities to adapt to and co-exist with a healthy and eco friendly environment. 

    The fragments or components of technology are more dynamic and volatile than any of their counterparts of the yesteryears. Hence its not just a knowledge of these components that is required but an everlasting appetite for innovation and improved design approaches brought forth by the present cluster of engineers, scientists and technologists that would fuel the constant and incremental improvements to realize the goal of an IR4.0 eco system.

    Our efforts at Bentley Systems is to create one such platform where technologists, engineering professionals and researchers can come together to learn, brain storm, discuss and develop ideas to take us closer to the IR4.0 environment. Digitalization of infrastructure is the next big event in the wings and would contribute immensely to the realization of the IR4.0 era.

    I do hope that interested educators and students would visit our portal and help us make a valuable contribution to the forthcoming challenges.

Reply
  • Hi Khushali, 

    This is Suparna from Bentley Systems. Your post is indeed a great read and very relevant to the present times. As far as your concern for the disproportionate ratio of skilled educators to the aspiring learners is concerned , I guess one reason could be the gap in the means and the curriculum of education that was practiced in the earlier generations and the nature of the knowledge that is prevalent in the current era. 

    The current demand is that of an amalgamation of in depth knowledge of traditional concepts combined with the aptitude of an IR4 eco-system . This in tandem with an acumen to apply the understandings would help us conceive ideas that advance our capacities/capabilities to adapt to and co-exist with a healthy and eco friendly environment. 

    The fragments or components of technology are more dynamic and volatile than any of their counterparts of the yesteryears. Hence its not just a knowledge of these components that is required but an everlasting appetite for innovation and improved design approaches brought forth by the present cluster of engineers, scientists and technologists that would fuel the constant and incremental improvements to realize the goal of an IR4.0 eco system.

    Our efforts at Bentley Systems is to create one such platform where technologists, engineering professionals and researchers can come together to learn, brain storm, discuss and develop ideas to take us closer to the IR4.0 environment. Digitalization of infrastructure is the next big event in the wings and would contribute immensely to the realization of the IR4.0 era.

    I do hope that interested educators and students would visit our portal and help us make a valuable contribution to the forthcoming challenges.

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