Engineering education: Challenges, opportunities, and future trends

Engineering contributes significantly to the economic wellbeing, social stability, and cultural development of the society. Engineering also plays an important role in global human development, sustainability, and preservation of the environment. Importance of high quality engineering education is therefore self-evident. Based on the authors' experience as professional engineers and university educators, this paper highlights the recent challenges, opportunities, and future trends in engineering education. Major challenges currently facing engineering education relate to curriculum, teaching and learning, and the educational environment. As to quality, balance needs to be maintained between general excellence and targeted areas of excellence. In terms of pedagogy, focus should be on improvement of students' problem-solving and learning skills, ability for continued learning throughout their careers, and soft skills (leadership qualities, team work, communication skills, and an understanding of economics, business, management, and innovation and entrepreneurship). Good support should be available in terms of qualified technical personnel and well equipped workshops, laboratories, and computing facilities. Some of the emerging trends in engineering education include hands-on learning labs, industry-centric curriculum, upgradation of classroom environment and facilities (to support active learning and group-based learning), and use of interactive learning technologies (such as adaptive learning software, e-learning, distance learning, etc).