Three major challenges, sustainability, the fourth industrial revolution, and employability, will require new types of engineering programs, to help students develop skills in cross-disciplinarity, complexity, and contextual understanding. Future engineering students should be able to understand the needs for technological, sustainable solutions in context. The engineering graduates should be able to act in complex and chaotic situations. The question is how engineering institutions are responding now and how they should respond in the future. This article analyses the general responses from engineering education over the last 20 years. These responses are student-centred learning, integration of theory and practice, digital and online learning, and the definition of professional competencies. Examples are given of institutions that are already applying several of these components in the curriculum. On the long-term horizon, more personalised curriculum models are emerging based on students developing and documenting their own learning and career trajectories, as part of their lifelong learning strategy.

This open access book is dedicated to exploring methods and charting the course for enhancing engineering education in and beyond 2023. It delves into the idea that education, coupled with social connections, is indispensable for a more profound comprehension of the world and the creation of an improved quality of life. The book serves as a conduit for incorporating complex problem-solving into engineering education across various formats. It offers a structured approach for tackling complex issues, comparing an array of techniques for managing complexity within the realm of engineering education. Moreover, the book scrutinizes several complex case studies derived from the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. Additionally, it explores intricate problem-solving and curriculum change case studies specific to engineering education from Harvard University, the University of Technology Sydney, and Aalborg University.

Informal learning is increasingly being recognized as a way to complement the formal curriculum within engineering and provide additional opportunities for competency development while engaging diverse students. Learning about engineering occurs throughout life, via experiential and spontaneous opportunities that inform our understandings of the world. Learning is not confined to the engineering curriculum and class time but, rather, continues informally and implicitly throughout the daily lives and activities of university students. Often framed in contrast to formal learning, informal learning is more as it represents a significant portion of students’ time and effort and contributes to their persistence, competence development, and broadened engagement. This chapter provides an overview of informal learning, discussing its definition, history, and settings and activities relevant to engineering education. The second section of the chapter focuses on the benefits and outcomes of informal learning, related to competency development and engagement of diverse learners. The third section identifies implications and provides recommendations for engineering researchers and practitioners to study, integrate, and recognize informal learning as an opportunity to prepare the current and future generations of engineers for 21st-century challenges, via cultivating the requisite competencies and engaging students with a range of backgrounds and experiences.

Aalborg University has grown out of a certain educational mindset based on reform pedagogy and German critical theory back in the 1970s. Aalborg University has developed problem and project based learning as the core principles for education at a systemic level. In this chapter, the history and contemporary principles and the educational practices are presented.

Traditional engineering education approaches are recognizable around the world – lectures, tutorials, laboratories, some projects. With the emergence of Industry 4.0, the world in which engineers practice is evolving at an ever-increasing rate, combining a greater focus on complex sociotechnical problems with new technologies and increasingly powerful design tools. In general, the engineering curricula have not adapted quickly to this change, but there is a shift in expectations of who and what engineering students should be. Engineering curricula are becoming more flexible, as are the learning environments in which they are implemented. This chapter draws upon the Doblin 10 types of innovation model as a framework to unpack the different kinds of innovation inherent in these emerging forms of disruption. It identifies that innovation is mostly clustered in the configuration and experience of our degrees, rather than the degrees themselves, and shows that effective disruption requires combining several types of innovation to be successful. The chapter further addresses the disruption process itself, highlighting the continuous improvement mindset that is necessary to commence, continue, and sustain disruptive innovation in engineering education. It identifies potential barriers and how these can be overcome, ending with a call to action.

Since computers have become widely used, programming has become a critical skill. Programming languages are built upon English language words and phrases. It is possible that this could make learning an English-based programming language for non-English language speakers especially challenging. In actuality, the literature did not say much. While many focused on solutions to teaching programming, and some researchers focused on the problems that led to these solutions, very few researchers made any distinction between the language capabilities of novices. Based on the literature, this research study highlights issues that directly influence beginners learning programming, looking particularly at the difficulties faced by those that do not have English as a first language. The methodological approach used in this research is a mixed methods design, with the questionnaire method for data collection in both CQUniversity in Australia and Sebha University in Libya, with experienced programmers and novice programmers in various stages of their study. These data were categorized and analysed to identify areas of difficulty. It became clear that there was a difference. While Australian students identified issues with loop statements (Do...While) and other program logic, Libyan students identified the major problem to be error messages and their interpretation, with over 71% of students identifying this as a problem. However, error messages were mentioned by just 2% of participants at CQUniversity. It was clear that English was a problem.