Perspectives on Challenge-Driven Engineering Education for a Sustainable Future

Engineering education has changed and evolved over decades in harmony with societies challenges. Today, sustainable development is of greatest importance and one way of equipping future engineers with the competencies to tackle this challenge is through Challenge Driven Education (CDE). This study takes on an exploratory approach when studying the implementation of CDE as it is formed at two different universities, one in Sweden, and one in Tanzania. By interviewing key-actors such as teachers and stakeholders who are in one way or another engaged or are about to become involved in CDE, an investigation has been conducted in order to understand how these key-actors view CDE as a successful pedagogical approach for educating engineers of the future. First, a question was asked on which competencies for sustainability could be considered important in future engineers. Second, the participants were encouraged to tell how CDE could develop from their perspective. Results show that the depiction of key competencies for sustainability correlates well with the participants views of what is important for future engineers, although it is evident that good communication between stakeholders and students/teachers about what is expected to train during a CDE course is paramount. The study also shows the importance of stakeholders trusting each other and having a common picture of what a CDE collaboration should lead to in order to achieve the best possible results of such training.QC 20211230