engleski

HED 2.0 - How much change does engineering education really need?

The number of young people enrolling in scientific and engineering fields in higher education [HE] is decreasing for two major causes: 1) students choosing other fields of higher education which appear to offer better chances to influence the development of the society, social visibility and financial prosperity and 2) potential students neglecting HE at all and pursuing faster tracks of education enabling them to participate in economy and social life much faster and with clear, reachable role. We no longer know what future engineers will be doing and what knowledge and skills they will need. Fundamental knowledge in any profession has grown 1000 times since 1900 and most engineers will be working multidisciplinary needing several professions. This paper tries to understand and leverage from WEB 2.0 which is not a new technology but rather a new way in which existing technology (Internet, XML/HTTP, streaming, virtual reality, … ) is used. Before, users were passive consumers of content provided mostly by organizations within the framework of their activities they thought are important for their customers, clients, citizens, users. Web 2.0 creates a number of virtual constructs that activate users making them providers of the content and putting them in intensive, continuous interaction. HED 2.0 stands for “ Higher Education Completely Revisited” and is a mental exercise trying to understand how could HE be organized so that students could become active creators of their learning process, using its components for what they believe is important to them and thus taking major responsibility in their own education. Engineering profession (and education) has to be(come) fun, promising, challenging and attractive to both students and high school children. It can be so only if they are presented with a range of exciting, meaningful and challenging projects they can immediately participate in: human colony on Mars, artificial intelligence, world peace, secure home, secure transportation, machine teaching etc. Each position within a project should define its “ required knowledge base” that would become a student’ s curricula. Specified granules of engineering knowledge and skills in such a curriculum would be acquired by students at their own pace and method using recorded lectures, video documentaries, virtual laboratories and mini projects. Students would verify their progress by results of projects and through globally standardized, computerized exams. Teachers would become mentors, advisers and designers of courseware, exams and projects. Thus borders between HE and life long learning would dissolve in content and methods.

WEB2.0; project based learning; e-learning; self-examination; student’ s responsibility for learning outcome

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