This entry discusses how the role of learners has changed in higher education due to the increasing use of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education formats and the provision of learning outside the educational sciences. As (higher) education institutions lose their pivotal role as singular creators of “new knowledge”; the learning and the learner become the centre of attention. The argument is that students should take charge of their learning while teachers become co-learners and facilitators in complex learning processes. Traditional disciplinary boundaries are replaced with fluid boundaries that allow for the influence of different disciplines and external stakeholders in creating knowledge. This shift requires a new approach to learning design and evaluation of learning. Suggesting greater flexibility in learning paths and a more inclusive attitude towards all stakeholders as part of the learning plight. Exploring this change in constructive alignment for inter and transdisciplinary learning is at the heart of this discussion.@en

This commentary addresses how designing interdisciplinary education differs from merely addressing diversity. It will give clues and examples of elements relevant to interdisciplinary education design.@en

TU Delft education system is transformed on three levels: 1) new courses and projects in existing B.Sc. and M.Sc. programs for multidisciplinary and reflective learning; 2) new M.Sc. programs focusing on multi and interdisciplinarity, personal development, and professional skills; and 3) central Interdisciplinary Projects for Master Students from different programs. With these steps, the university offers students a learning ecosystem where identity-building can occur, fosters interdisciplinary teamwork, and strong interaction with the professional world and government is necessary to finish projects. In this article, the ecosystem will be explained, and results will be shared of surveys among students who experienced learning in the learning ecosystem. The surveys show that students under stand their future role in the community as engineers, feel that they have acquired new skills, feel better about framing complex problems, and are more competent to work in the industry.@en

While tackling sustainability challenges, engineering students confront various uncertainties, including the unpredictability of real-world scenarios, unfamiliar aspects of problems, and conflicting viewpoints among stakeholders. Despite previous research indicating the likelihood of encountering such uncertainties in sustainability projects, it is unclear if students are aware of uncertainty and what specific regulatory behaviors they develop to address them. This study seeks to deepen our understanding of the awareness and regulation of uncertainty by students while they work on real-life sustainability challenges. To achieve this, we observed nine MSc students enrolled in a transdisciplinary course on urban sustainability at a Dutch university of technology. Through interviews, we explored the uncertainties they faced and how they navigated them. Our analysis, conducted through open, consensus-based coding by two researchers, revealed that students primarily encountered the uncertainty of multiplicity, characterized by divergent stakeholder perspectives. Additionally, students increasingly recognized the inherent unpredictability of the challenges over the course. To address uncertainty, students developed three kinds of behaviors to deal with uncertainty: seeking social support from commissioners, coaches, and peers; employing small coping mechanisms to overcome obstacles; and developing attitudes such as empathy, flexibility, and relativism. This study offers detailed insights into how students navigate uncertainty. Moving forward, efforts in uncertainty education should prioritize how educators can positively influence the development of metacognition in uncertainty.@en

Universities open their doors to society, inviting the complexity of the world to enter engineering education through challenge-based courses. While working on complex issues, engineering students learn to deal with different kinds of uncertainty: uncertainty about the dynamics of a real-world challenge, the knowledge gaps in the problem, or the conflicting perspectives amongst the people involved. Although we know from previous research that students are likely to encounter these uncertainties in sustainability challenges, which metacognitive strategies they use to deal with them is unclear. We interviewed nine MSc students at the end of a challenge-based course at a Dutch university of technology. We asked the students how they dealt with uncertainty in collaboration with the commissioner, their student team, and the teachers. The interviews were analyzed through grounded, consensus-based coding by two researchers. Preliminary results show students use three main strategies. First, the different perspectives from peers in their team inform the position of the student. Second, students find expectation management of the commissioner essential, yet students struggle with how to do this in a professional and timely way. Third, students frame the uncertainties they encounter as part of the learning process, which allows them to accept the possibility of failure. This study provides first insights in metacognitive uncertainty strategies and suggests those strategies should become a more prominent topic in coaching students. When uncertainty becomes an explicit part of challenge-based education, students learn to deal with both the known and unknown in the transition to a sustainable society.

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Purpose
In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies.

Design/methodology/approach
This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews.

Findings
First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach.

Originality/value
This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education.
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This article is a reflection of a SEFI workshop on Retention. In the workshop, a SWOT Analysis has been realised of four pedagogical solutions addressing Retention in undergraduate STEM education. The pedagogical solutions are programmatic assessment, micro-credentials for online mathematics (support) learning modules, autonomous and self-regulated learning and mathematical competencies for learning. Results have provided insights into the relevance and feasibility of implementation.@en

University students are asked to become all-round human beings, knowing how to be engaged in Engineering in the future, as well as wholly socialised and going through personal development steps. However, how and where are the students supposed to acquire these skills? Do we already have them in the Higher Education programmes and curricula? This article explores low threshold steps that can be taken to tweak the curriculum and implicit professionalisation of staff towards incorporating transversal skills and reflective activities that allow students to develop to their full potential.. One is a roadmap Workshop identifying guiding principles and touchpoint activities for curricular change. The other is a survey on how transversal skills are currently thought to have been embedded in the curriculum.

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Often industry expects university graduates to hit the ground running. One way to deal with this expectation is to offer our graduates opportunities to collaborate with the industry - a collaboration to acquire theoretical skills and acumen in engineering practices and how a business works. Challenge-based learning environments intimated by the CDIO principles, which focus on real-life experiences, external stakeholder involvement, complex problem solving, and a focus explicitly on knowledge application, offer a rich environment that may allow the needed preparation. One of the proposed outcomes for students is the improved acquisition of professional capabilities. However, it is not established yet, whether these professional skills are acquired or strengthened in CBE settings. Professional capabilities focus on four levels; knowing oneself, critically thinking about the problem, collaborating, and having contextual and ethical awareness. In this study, we surveyed if students perceive improvement in applying professional skills. We particularly questioned professional skills enabling behaviors based on validated questionnaires of EPFL and Univ. Sydney. Additionally, we have gathered and analysed the peer feedback within teams on personal leadership. Contrary to the expectations, leadership skills and professional capabilities are unrelated.

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In tertiary mathematics education for engineers (hereafter called service mathematics education, SME), there is a long-lasting controversy on what and how to teach. The goal of SME is to provide a base for engineering-specific courses and to develop mathematical competencies needed for academic success and professional practice. A leading question in engineering education is how to take mathematical competencies into account when designing content. Mathematical competencies are employed to understand, judge, do, and use mathematics in a variety of mathematical contexts and situations in which mathematics could play a role [1]. Although mathematical competencies have been introduced for about two decades, Alpers [2] noted that research in engineering higher education had focused chiefly on the modelling competency and less on other competencies. By means of a scoping review, the current study aims to examine how mathematical competencies are investigated in higher education research. The main research question is “To what extent and in what ways have mathematical competencies been examined in higher engineering education research?” Papers were retrieved and qualitatively reviewed using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta- Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. A systematic search yielded 166 records, of which, 65 unique records were relevant to engineering education and screened for eligibility. A synthesis of 23 studies reviewed showed that problem-solving and modelling were the most investigated mathematical competencies and were often investigated together or with other mathematical competencies. The inconsistencies in the terminologies used suggest a need for clearer conceptualizations to advance research and inform practice on mathematical competencies. @en

In this paper we studied the student’s perception of the acquisition of professional capabilities in Challenge based learning environments with a strong reflective component. The results show students feel the relevance of personnel development from the very moment the enter their master studies. However, they only truly acquire all the relevant professional capabilities when working in interdisciplinary teams on real life problems in interaction with stakeholders.@en

Integration is key characteristic of Interdisciplinary learning and often also of Challenge based Education. The definition and operationalisation in Engineering Education is, however debated widely. In this study we explored the tacit knowledge of Engineering Lecturers in HE education by doing semi-structured interviews. It yields suggestions for operationalising integration, boundary conditions and a peak insight into the beliefs and match with theoretical literature. @en

In 2019, the authors came up with a vision of the future university for engineers. It describes a future situation and behaviour of ‘reflective engineers” who interact and behave in a particular way while engaging with technology. The vision is created with a Vision in Product Design (VIP) methodology from Hekkert & van Dijk. This vision of the future university starts with the idea that every one of us has personal ambitions, talents and interests that drives our interests and ways of working for the good of society at large. Nevertheless, at the start of our career, we may not be aware of these ambitions, talents and interests, and one needs to explore and reflect on a variety of challenges to discover: (1) In what way we would like to engage with technology (2) How would we like to work together in the technological domain (3) Whether we prefer to engage in slow/fast production cycles A reflective portfolio including engineering roles as a vehicle to become a deliberate professional will be embedded in the interdisciplinary master curriculum of biomedical engineering at the 3ME department at TU Delft. In this conceptual paper, we will expand on the design implementation process of the reflective engineer in challenge-based education following the vision of the future university.

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The Covid-19 pandemic prompted a rapid shift to online education. The 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education (4TU.CEE), initiated thewriting of a white paper. The authors present a research synthesis conducted across the four Universities of Technology in the Netherlands (hereafter the 4TUs). They also reflect on what the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to our education system. Based on the synthesis results, they provide policymakers with implications relevant to the (immediate) responseto continued pandemic-related restrictions. At the same time, they signal that digital education offers new opportunities for both scaling up and quality improvement to actively shape a preferred future for teaching. @en

1.1 Background To educate future competent engineers, it is crucial to adopt teaching and learning approaches that support students in dealing with highly complex problems [1]. One strategy is to enhance service mathematics in higher engineering education by shifting from outcome-centered to competence-centered approaches [2]. This strategy is examined and adopted in a large-scale innovation programme of mathematics education (PRIME) at TU Delft to design effective service mathematics courses in higher engineering education. As mathematics is at the core of engineering education, we will, in this workshop, explore how to create a viable and resilient educational model for developing mathematical competencies, described in the Framework of Mathematics Curricula in Engineering Education [2, 3]. Additionally, we will discuss how the development of mathematical competencies can be facilitated by leveraging technology in blended and remote learning environments. The aim of this workshop is to start a process via a living document which serves to share and create material and expertise in teaching, learning and assessing the mathematical competencies.@en

Building with Nature (BwN) infrastructure designs are characterised by disciplinary integration, non-linearity, diverse and fluid design requirements, and long-term time frames that balance the limitations of earth’s natural systems and the socio-technical systems created by humans. Differentiating roles in the engineering design process may offer strategies for better solutions. Four complementary engineering design roles were distinguished, namely: Specialists, System Integrators, Front-end Innovators, and Contextual Engineers. The key research question addressed in this paper asks, how can the introduction of engineering roles enhance interdisciplinary processes for BwN design? Three Building with Nature design workshops with international groups of students from multiple disciplines and various education levels provided the ideal context for investigating whether engineering roles enhance such interdisciplinary ways of working. Results indicate that the application of engineering roles in each of the three workshops indeed supported interdisciplinary design. A number of conditions for successful implementation within an authentic learning environment could be identified. The engineering roles sustain an early, divergent way of looking at the design problem and support the search for common ground across the diverse perspectives of the team members, each bringing different disciplinary backgrounds to the design table. The chapter closes with a discussion on the value of engineering design roles and their significance for the Building with Nature approach.

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Interdisciplinarity for complex problem solving is a rising phenomenon. Each self-respecting university is trying to realise different programmes and approaches to interdisciplinary teaching and research. The debate on what interdisciplinarity is, how it may work as a substantial part of a university, which barriers are encountered to realising interdisciplinary teaching and research and what the added value is, is addressed in this paper from a social science perspective. Based on the attendance of a conference at the Volkswagenstiftung organised by the Humboldt University of Berlin, different scholarly viewpoints and examples are explored on Interdisciplinary teaching and (researching). Collaborations across the at-times-fragmented subfields of research and education ultimately yield insightful, informative, and even educational experience that creates space for mutual understanding and new ways of thinking about seemingly-established approaches to knowledge-building and communication.
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Challenge-based learning (CBL) is increasingly on the higher education agenda. In many universities of technology in the Netherlands, CBL is being implemented in engineering education programmes to prepare students to work on authentic, complex, societal challenges, provided by partners from outside of the university. Making societal impact is an important driver the introduction of CBL, however, on a more pedagogical level, little is known about the motivational aspects of student learning in these challenge-based transdisciplinary courses.@en

Structural Mechanics (SM) is a fundamental subject in engineering bachelor curricula. Since experimental investigations play a central role in the discipline, laboratory practice is often present in SM courses. Many instructors recognize in laboratory activities, not only a way to develop laboratory skills and appreciation of the scientific method, but also a chance to reinforce students’ conceptual understanding of the discipline. However, there is evidence that laboratory instruction is not always successful in achieving conceptual understanding. To address this problem, the goal of the presented study is to investigate how laboratory activities can be designed to support students' conceptual understanding of SM. First, the disciplinary body of knowledge is analysed through Johnstone’s model of multilevel thought. In SM, as in Physics and in Chemistry, phenomena are analysed at different scales: the phenomenological level, the invisible level, and the symbolic level. The understanding of most Structural Mechanics concepts relies on linking the phenomenological world to the underlying invisible world using symbolic representations such as equations, diagrams, experimental data plots, and physics models. To transition and translate between “levels of thoughts” and understand SM concepts, representational competence and abilities in model-based reasoning are needed. In the next paragraphs, a review of successful studies from similar subjects is presented, where the learning activities targeted representations and model reasoning in laboratory settings. The findings are summarised in a set of design guidelines to help instructors develop successful laboratory learning activities for SM.@en