Future of engineering education

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to present a new concept of engineering education called ‘successful education’. First, the paper provides a brief discussion of the major forces driving the evolution of engineering education. These include the evolution in general of our civilisation from knowledge-based to creativity-based and the corresponding emerging challenges this transformation presents. Next, the paper provides an overview of selected sources of our inspiration and knowledge used to develop successful education, including an interpretation of the evolution of engineering education from both the systems and theory of inventive problem solving perspectives. It includes basic information about the theory of successful intelligence, about the Medici effect and about the Da Vinci principles. The core of the paper is a description of successful education as a new model for educating successful engineers. Basic objectives, assumptions and concepts of the model are presented. They include the concept of a successful department, its organisation, teaching based on the use of the theory of successful intelligence, its physical environment and various ways to create an appropriate ambience within it which stimulates creative learning. This concept is understood in pragmatic terms as an engineering activity that is focused on inventing engineering systems which are new, feasible, useful and potentially patentable.