Technological innovation happens on a daily basis all around us. Yet, in our educational programs there is rarely any attention paid to what this is and how this unfolds over time in real life. This is not at all surprising, since there is not one unified and widely accepted body of knowledge on technological innovation that is grounded enough, meaning, knowledge based on research of technological innovation practice. The CDIO-framework is implicitly addressing innovation from the perspective of existing technological knowledge and therefore is not yet equipped enough for the purpose of tech-innovation. This paper therefore aims to initiate a discussion on what technological innovation is and how this could fit within the CDIO-framework. We will provide a definition of technological innovation based on innovation theoretical framework which reaches its readiness when practice is able to apply the new technology to design, engineer, build, maintain and dispose the objects that apply that particular technology. This lens will be used to analyze a well-documented case that reports on the development of a new structural aircraft material that is now widely used in the Airbus A380, hence a technological innovation. It will be shown in this paper that the research activities that support the development of the new technology, follow the logic of innovating as a generic and natural phenomenon. The paper ends by proposing a possible path to bring the subject of technological innovation within the confines of our educational curricula, without too much cutting on the subjects that we are teaching. Its base comes from the idea that what we are teaching today is the result of a technological innovation process of yesterday.@en

One of five Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs), was launched in Europe in 2014 and has its focus on exploration, extraction, mineral processing, metallurgy, recycling and material substitution of raw materials. To reach the vision, where the European Union’s industrial strength is based on a cost-efficient, secure, sustainable supply and use of raw materials, a new generation of skilled people entering industry, universities and research needs to be developed. Today’s technical MSc graduates in raw materials and especially
primary resources (i.e. exploration, extraction, mining and mineral processing and metallurgy) best suits large companies where they often act as specialists and experts. For small to medium enterprises as well as for our future engineers other skills than technical are necessary. As a part of the KIC Raw Materials, the education project “The implementation of CDIO in raw material programmes” started in 2016. The project focuses, during 2016-2017, on (WP1) faculty- and (WP2) pilot case development. There are no academic institutes in Europe that have yet applied CDIO for primary resource related MSc programmes. This
paper describes an education project within the KIC Raw material and presents key outputs with implementing CDIO in mining and metallurgy related programmes@en

When drafting the first issue of this document it sometimes felt like I was manoeuvring a small canoe through a highly viscous fluid of conservatism and complacency, with everybody bogged down by today’s thinking, preparing next Tuesday’s nine o’clock lecture, aiming for the best learning experience by optimising teaching and assessment. The issues of the day are about the “how next week”, not about the “what next year”, let alone the “why in the next decade”. After publicising I was happy to discover that I had been somewhat mistaken in my impression. Many people in universities, industries and research institutes across the globe informed me they are with me in my canoe, or want to be. That they want to rethink higher engineering education and help initiate change to enhance the effectivity of engineering study programmes and professional training. Like me, they are concerned about as well as challenged by the technological revolution that will rock the foundations of engineering education in the coming decades. The first edition inspired many conversations about “The Future Engineer” at my home university and many partner universities and institutes abroad. The “Free Spirits” Think Tank of the 4TU.Centre of Engineering Education in the Netherlands, which investigates the rise of new engineering profiles in the coming 10 to 15 years and develops matching scenarios for campus education in 2030, has taken my vision as a source of inspiration. The numerous meetings and workshops I attended between engineering academics, industries and engineering consultancies in the Netherlands and abroad, and the conferences and panels of the global CDIO Initiative and the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) in Florence (2015) all discussed the subject of the engineer and industry of the future. They addressed the impact of the changing global economy, the fast pace of change, the Foreword to the Second Revised Edition limited shelf life of specialist knowledge, the university’s role in innovation, the need for an interdisciplinary mind-set, the global interconnectedness, the rise of machine intelligence and the use of open standards. These are all aspects that shape the rapidly changing world in which we live and in which we educate tomorrow’s engineers, who might be a different breed than the ones we have been educating over the past 50 years. These factors set the scene for the “why” and “what” of our future education. @en

Over the last couple of decades the world around us has changed at a dizzying pace by the globalisation and digitalisation, the horizontalisation of the socio-economic world, and the blending of technical, economical and societal cultures. The ways we communicate, work, play, travel and do business have changed dramatically, and are expected to change at an even faster pace in the future. We have entered an era where higher engineering education has to move from content coverage to content mastery. Are our programmes good enough to absorb the changes in the world 10 to 15 years from now? This paper discusses the results of an exploration by a Think Tank of academic staff about “what future engineers should learn in higher engineering education in 2030”. Key issues are the embedding of personal development in a meaningful way - the teaching of the “whole engineer”, the creation of purposeful engineering profiles for society, keeping them specific enough to create in-depth learning. @en