Toward a Comprehensive Pedagogy

As we discussed in part 1, humanity is facing many critical challenges, most of which are open-ended and complex systems, and they require broad input and experiences to address. We expect students and educators to be engaged in such societal issues and form multidisciplinary teams to address them. The increased complexity of technical methodologies and know-how expected of future engineers, challenges existing curriculum strategies. The deep learning needed to dig into a discipline, to understand and apply it, must be combined with a learning strategy to increase the ability of students to relate to, and connect with, other disciplines in a meaningful way. It is not a matter of substituting students’ learning of core technical competencies; it is a matter of creating synergy in the learning process so students will experience the inevitable interaction between technical and contextual learning.