Siemens and Sony are challenging students worldwide to imagine sustainable design with immersive engineering What…
Adina Imanbayeva, Robin de Graaf, Cindy Poortman (University of Twente, the Netherlands)
Today’s world faces increasingly complex and multifaceted challenges, such as climate change, resource scarcity, the need for sustainability, and the overwhelmingly fast pace of technological development. These challenges require innovative, interdisciplinary solutions as developments are increasingly interconnected. Changes in one system can have a tremendous effect on other systems, even on the other side of the world. Consequently, future engineers must be equipped to integrate diverse perspectives and synthesise insights from multiple disciplines. This creates a need for engineering education to adopt interdisciplinary learning and teaching approaches to prepare students for these demands.
One such approach gaining traction is Challenge-Based Learning (CBL), where students are tasked with solving real-world societal challenges. CBL encourages students to work across traditional academic boundaries, integrating knowledge from different fields and involving stakeholders outside academia to create comprehensive and innovative solutions.
While CBL holds great potential, implementing it in curricula is a challenge in itself. The shift to CBL requires teachers to step outside their areas of expertise, involve other disciplines and external stakeholders, and become facilitators rather than knowledge providers. This shift can be overwhelming, as it involves being less in control and giving students greater autonomy over their learning, allowing them to make mistakes and grow from those experiences.
Recognising these challenges, we developed Challenge Up, a digital CBL advice wizard that supports the transition towards CBL in existing higher education courses. Challenge Up is designed to guide teachers through the process of gradually integrating CBL into their courses. By applying the CBL Implementation Continuum (Imanbayeva, de Graaf, & Poortman, 2023), the tool allows educators to assess their current teaching practices, define their desired level of CBL intensity, and receive personalised, practice-informed advice on how they can achieve their goals. If you want to implement CBL in your courses, Challenge Up is a valuable resource that is now freely available to everyone at challengeup.utwente.nl.
Incorporating CBL into higher education is not a simple task—it is a gradual, iterative process that requires careful planning and execution. Some teachers have already begun introducing elements of CBL into their teaching but struggle with how to transition fully, leading to uncertainty about which practices to maintain, modify, or replace. By providing educators with the necessary support and resources, tools like Challenge Up aim to make the transition more manageable. However, if we are to implement CBL comprehensively, a transition towards more interdisciplinary collaboration is needed. But that raises several questions:
- How can effective interdisciplinary collaboration among educators be fostered?
- What strategies can help overcome institutional barriers to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration in learning and teaching?
- Which tools can support educational change and facilitate the adoption of interdisciplinary learning across diverse fields?
- How can educators be supported in shifting from traditional teaching roles to facilitators in an interdisciplinary learning environment?
Questions like these, though not exhaustive, provide directions for transitions in higher education, enriching the educational landscape and better preparing students to tackle the complex challenges of the future.