Podcast European Engineering Educators

As we enter the 3rd year of recording the SEFI podcast, Neil and Natalie bring season 5 to a close with their person highlights from all six episodes. And, as ever, a heartfelt thanks to all listeners from across the…

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) is transforming engineering education by allowing students to tackle real-world interdisciplinary challenges in collaboration with external partners. Jorge Membrillo-Hernández from Tecnologico de Monterrey is a pioneer in integrating CBL. Engineering education is home to many different learning…

The isolation felt by engineering educators who are passionate about teaching and learning, but who reside in technically focused engineering departments, is widely reported. The case is no different in Africa, where few institutions recognise educational research as a valid…

The increasing importance of transdisciplinary approaches in engineering education is driven by the need to address complex societal challenges by moving beyond disciplinary silos to embrace new and forgotten knowledges … As the problems that society faces become more complex…

In this episode we spoke to Dr. Ann-Kristin Winkens, a postdoctoral researcher in the Gender and Diversity in Engineering Research Group (GDI) at RWTH Aachen in Germany. Ann-Kristin draws upon her prior education in environmental engineering when researching areas of systems resilience and competencies needed when designing resilient systems.

In this episode we spoke about how ChatGPT and other Gen-AI tools may affect engineering education assessment methods, and how it might be used to facilitate learning.

Our two guests bring together their complimentary expertise (Inês in Psychology and in researching student experience and mental health, and Jan in teaching languages in a context in which language policies have created obstacles to creating cultural diversity) to discuss their work exploring how the engineering education community believe DEI related terms are understood and implemented in their own institution and in other contexts around the globe.

The SEFI podcast was originally conceived as a project which would run for two years with monthly episodes. As we approach its second anniversary, Neil and Natalie would like to thank everyone listeners and guests for their support in making it into a valuable source of information about the SEFI community and contemporary topics in engineering education.

Growing student numbers, along with space and timetabling constraints, are limiting the number of opportunities that engineering students have to engage in practical work within their degree programmes. Such deficiencies in educational offerings have implications for the knowledge and skills that students bring to the workplace, and efforts have thus focused on the development of non-traditional practical work (NTPW).

The importance of engineering ethics education has been growing in recent decades, as exemplified by the numerous SEFI podcast episodes which feature the topic. However, there is increasing emphasis onthe need to shift from a focus on roles and responsibilities of the individual engineer, to taking a more macro-ethical approach.