Online GEDC Industry Forum

The GEDC industry forum organised by Mc Master University (Canada) and Petrus communication took place from 28 September to 1 October, similarly to the SEFI conference, online.

Given the different time zones around the world, the organisation was a bit challenging. The event was based on the previous editions that took place in Fontainebleau; divided into 3 parts: plenary sessions -“inspiring groups” ; break-out group work on specific subjects ; and the last day an innovative presentations of of the group work results.

This year’s topics of reflection were :

• Socially conscious engineering embedding ethics and sustainability
• Practical collaboration re-examined
• Agile innovation systems and ecosystems
• Building creativity in education
• Innovation and entrepreneurship literacy
• Promoting an interdisciplinary approach to problem solving
• Ensuring the next generation thrive (not just survive)
• Corporate learning, alternative and complementary certification
• The engineer of the future (group led by Xavier Fouger)
• A new education model (the most sought for group)

These working groups had some difficulties in keeping the participation continuous. There were overall more participants during the plenary sessions than in the Design Dynamic Groups.

The first day, there were exciting presentations by Mc Master University and Airbus, in connection with the UNESCO Paris Declaration: “Learning through life”, “Problem Learning through community projects” and “Learning from nature”.

The A Step 2030 project in which SEFI is involved was also presented by Una Beagon from Dublin. This project, which aims to investigate the future role of engineers in society, was perfectly within the scope of the event.

Social activities such as “Leaders are Readers” or “Teaching the world to sing” were very original and did not reach the deserved audience.

It was a great opportunity to discover each other and to confront each other’s points of view, however it seems that the collaborative work among educators and the management is not yet completely seemless.

Anne-Marie Jolly – Commission des titres d’ingénieur (CTI)