Facilitating 21st Century Skills in Engineering Students

Engineering education is at an important juncture more than ever before, where engineers need to play an important role ill creatively solving global and complex challenges related to energy, health care and environment; they need to work with an understanding of multiple disciplines in collaborative teams that are culturally and philosophically diverse; cultivate complex communication and social skills,' and, among other things, engineers need to be able to explain science and technology to a society that is increasingly more doubtful of its impact and intentions, despite enjoying the comforts that come with the progress in engineering&technology. This growing pace of innovation, both in terms of products and business models, is also likely to make the job of an engineer quite challenging. Engineers must, therefore, learn to work with ambiguity, diversity of disciplines and with humility, regarding their own skills and abilities.

To prepare engineers for the global workplace, it is clear that a traditional engineering curriculum which is content heavy, will not be sufficient. There are already indications that there is a significant gap between what undergraduate engineering students are taught and assessed and what the professional engineers and industry practitioners expect them to be capable of (Felder, R.M., On-the-Job Training, Chemical Engineering Education, Vol. 42, No.2, pp. 96-97, 2008). This gap will significantly widen, unless intentional, well-targeted measures are put into place in engineering education to specifically foster 21 st century skills. Learning outcomes, curriculum design, classroom practices, learning and assessment tasks, all have to be coherently crafted and implemented, so as to facilitate a flexible, personalized and significantly meaningful experience for the student.

The paper begins by exploring students' knowledge and skills of the 21 st century that are needed for the modern engineer. We provide our perspective on aspects of curriculum design, impactful classroom practices and methods of assessment that can be expected to form the bedrock of engineering education for the next decade. Our paper will only attempt to throw light on the immediate path ahead. based on progress made in understanding, how learning works, how information and communications technology can augment good teaching and learning methods and how assessment practices (which remains a major handle to drive the learning process) may be re-envisioned to help students grapple with grand societal challenges and equip them with philosophies, concepts, ideas and imagination for contributing to the greater good of humankind.