Engineers can make a difference to the challenges of the next decade. However, the skills required by engineers to meet these requirements of society and industry require a new approach to engineering education that emphasises competencies of innovation, collaboration and value-based decision making. Complementarily, transversal and meta-skills will be required to support engineers and engineering students adapt to new, emergent technologies and problems. Consequently, within Scotland, meta-skills are increasingly embedded in authentic programmes (such as Graduate Apprenticeships) and incorporated within modules seeking to develop engineers and holistic engineering practice. This paper will present a case study of a Scottish University that, through one module, provides students with an opportunity to develop such future engineering skills.In this third year module, a team of students are required to identify an opportunity that seeks to help a specific group within society through a Design Futures/Thinking approach, and then iteratively develop a desirable, viable and feasible solution over twelve weeks; students are required to self-align their ideation with UN SDGs. This paper will outline the skills that students develop from innovation, to empathy, to human-centred problem solving, to future/horizon scanning, to collaboration and self-awareness. Also, it will share student experiences about skills developed and the benefits and challenges of such an approach to nurturing skills relevant to employability in the 21st Century.
Nesbitt et al. (Thu,) studied this question.