Communication au Congrès FMOI, Rio de Janeiro, octobre 1996
ABSTRACT
Engineering education will be more and more influenced by the emergence and the development of the information and communication technologies. The place and the role of the computer are now obvious. The networks between computers become true educational systems, as well as they offer opportunities to link education, information and research. Many recent conferences point out the necessity to better integrate these formidable tools in the re-definition of enginering courses and pedagogies. The development of systems that provides higher engineering education through satellites and information and communication networks is now considered as a very positive approach for the future. Self-learning, distance-learning, CAEE,... a new perspective for the next decade.
How can we integrate the new information revolution in the way of providing education and training? How can we combine access to information resources (through worldwide electronic means and networks) and knowledge consolidation?What will be the consequences on engineering education institutions?.
INTRODUCTION
"Engineering education" appeared for the first time as a conceptual and institutional project around the middle of the 18th Century when some institutions like the "Ecole Royale des Ponts et Chaussées" was founded in France (1747). New and original institutions were created and developed at that time in order to meet the needs of European societies for better trained people able to manage the construction of new infrastructures and to contribute to the development of the just growing industry. More than two centuries after, engineering education is largely, worldwidely, recognized as one of the most attractivebranch of higher education, with a huge diversification of educational programmes and institutions.
Nevertheless, engineering education seems today to be questioned or discussed in many countries. Are engineering educators not too much traditional, unable to develop new approaches for the education, the training and the professional and personal develoment of the future engineers? Are they ready to encourage new educational projects based on aies and on a responsible vision of the future developments of first and continuing engineering education?
THE INFORMATION ERA
The information revolution is one of the most important factor of change for engineering education. How to redefine engineering education in the context of post-industrial societies influenced by of a world-wide expansion ot their economy, by also an incontestable elevation of the knowledge and competency levels and by a more and more intricate situation of productive forces? Can we invent and establish new ways of education nad training that can better take into account the generalized access to specialized information and the world-wide networking?
The emergence of the information technology and society
The present situation can be caracterized by the emergence of information and communication in all fields of individual and professional life. The specialized information systems, tools and networks become more and more important and powerful. American politicians as well as European or Japanese ones are now strongly discussing the need of new information infrastructures, ready to put milliards of dollars or ECUs in the construction of such information superhighways. Data bases, data banks, experts systems, CAE, CAM, CIM, transborder data flows, EDI, CD-ROM, CD-I, Internet, groupware, etc.: engineers, entreprises, educators are really facing a new situation in which information resources (whatever the way of accessing them) are becoming key resources for the development of industry and society activities.
But, it is also important to mention the fact that the professional or specialized information is not the unique one to be taken into account. Within companies, one recognizes how it is important to stimulate the communication skills of the various employees: this ground information is essential for improving quality and productivity. It is also often said that engineers and staff people should better communicate with people from different cultures and languages and should better dialogue with the rest of the society, with politicians, with social specialists as well as with mass medias.
Transfer of what: information and/or knowledge?
In some respects, enginering education should not be limited to the unique transfer, around the age of 20, of a box of fixed knowledges which can be used during the entire career. The information revolution accelerates the changes in the society and open our minds to world-wide situations, to experiences and knowledges which we were unable to imagine some minutes before looking at our e-mail messages. Everyone can easily access to pieces of information and/or knowledge which are produced in another part of the world. Everyone can easily access to structured as well as unstructured information, public as well as confidential information. Everyone can easily access but also produce and disseminate information.
Under these conditions, the important question we have to answer is the following: does-it now exist a difference between fixed and structured education on the one hand and world-wide and circulating information on the other hand, in terms of preparing our minds (especially engineers' minds) to face new complex and moving situations and to develop professional activities?
Access to information: what's about class-rooms?
Schematically, one could assert that there is no more a necessity to build and use an engineering school or faculty for educating and training an engineer. There is no more necessary to geographically concentrate students at a given place and in a given time for teaching them the bases of mechanical engineering or water resources management. There is no more necessary to build class rooms for providing access to information and knowledge.
If an engineering faculty still continue to mean something, for which objectives, functions and services does it? Are engineering professors useful, if they still continue to repeat within the class-room what is more easily available through information channels?
The role of engineering faculties and schools should certainly change. For instance, they should develop easy access conditions, for everybody, to information and knowledge resources. They should stimulate the curiosity of young people. They should help the students to establish links between scattered and contradictory datas and knowledges (methodological input). They should contribute to the production, transfer and dissemination of new specialized informations and knowledges, as well as they should develop new methods of education based on these concepts.
Training engineers to manage their information resources
One important objective should also be the training of future engineers in the field of information and knowledge management. They certainly should better benefit, today, from the use of data bases as well as library or information centres. They should be rapidly exposed to modern information tools such as CD-ROM, CD-I, Internet, multimedia, etc., and be able to move within the new cyberspace. More than 50% of the classical lectures at technical universities (especially during the first years) should be suppressed and replaced by consultation of appropriate information and knowledge systems. Satellites, electronic networking, distance learning have to be considered now by universities as major factor for the development of enginering education and investments should be done in this direction, at local, national or regional levels.
If electronic information is becoming an incontestable tool and an efficient resource, one should not forget also other dimensions of the educational information system. Contacts with industry, exchanges with foreign partners, projects with other institutions (especially for multidisciplinary activities), experiences contributing to the cultural and personal development are, of course, of great value and should provide opportunities to engineering students to enrich their personal information and knowledge data base and to better understand the real world.
What's about curriculum development and pedagogy ?
An engineering curriculum should consist, in the future, in a structured but flexible organization with combine a personal access to numerous sources of pertinent information and knowledge and a strong, rigourous tutoring whose aim is to help students to transform variable information into durable knowledge. This new curriculum should encourage students to develop professional experiences such as project works, contacts with industry, international exchanges, etc.
The engineering faculty should of course provide access to the pertinent information sources and facilitate the educational communication among the students and staff community (on large geographical areas): electronic tutoring should, for instance, be strongly emphasized. The faculty should also set-up the procedures for the consolidation of the students knowledges (laboratory work, project work, pedagogical exchanges,...) and for the assessment of the learning results.
NEW FRONTIERS
The perspective of the information revolution implicates new views about the development of engineering education and about the future institutions able to able such education and training.
New institutions, new approaches of networking
During the last years, especially in Europe, one attended an important move towards some forms of institutional concentration and/or networking. Consortiums were strongly encouraged, for instance, by the European Union in order to stimulate the creation of new educational products and new information systems. Networks of technical universities and enginering schools were multiplied.
In other words, it appears more and more important to set-up new institutions (or new ways of ccoperating between institutions) in order to be able to face the development of the future higher education and specialized information market. It is necessary to define the few future major poles that will be able to invest in new and heavy equipments for the dissemination of information and knowledge, especially in the field of scientific, technical and engineering education. Joint ventures between technical universities and national and multinational advanced companies will certainly be multiplied in the near future.
One could easily imagine a scenario based on the development of few big centres (at national, regional or international levels) devoted to the active production and world-wide dissemination of structured information and knowledge. These supplying centres will be developed through joint ventures between well-known universities and major companies (Microsoft, IBM, Siemens, Nokia, etc...). A world-wide web of smaller institutions will be devoted to the consolidation of students knowledges at local levels and to an active and interactive networking (exchange of information, knowledge and know-how), but without heavyinvestments.
Information access and continuing or life-long education
Another consequence of the information revolution should be the transformation of the present ways of providing continuing education. In the future, it will be very easy to give access to specialized information and structured knowledge to every professional, to every engineer, either within his or her entreprise, or even directly at home. This will be an important market that universities should not forget, especially if one takes into account the fact that the life-long education and training is becoming a necessity.
But let us dream a bit. If engineering students are better prepared to use information resources and to develop and manage their own personal information and knowledge system, if university and industry are cooperating for creating new intelligent self-learning stations that students can use during their studies, why not imagine that after getting their degree, the young engineers continue to improve and develop their own personal data base. A permanent actualization of such personal information and knowledge systems should be a very important aim and should contribute to a new developement of continuing and long-life education.
Creating new information-education products and services
The information revolution will also stimulate teaching staffs at university, as well as researchers, to create new educational products and services. The recent multiplication of international conferences on computer aided engineering education gives testimonies of such a perspective. It will be important to encourage engineering professors to develop such educational modules which mix access to information and consolidation of knowledge (the European Union, for instance, supports such projects). These modules should be easily transferable, exchangable and should be accessable through various channels (CD-ROM, Internet, satellites,...).
Consequently, the payment of the teaching staff should give priority to such educational investment and take much more into account the work done for the creation of transferable information and knowledge modules. Education is becoming a cultural and economical investment; learning assistance has to be considered as an industrializable service on which quality assessment procedures can be applied.
A new management for engineering education
The new information and knowledge infrastructure calls a new management awareness and needs new managerial skills and procedures, based on a more systemic approach. The management team of such new institution should find convergences or compromises between different logics:
- the strategical, economical and decision-making process;
- the educational perspective (disciplines, departments, teaching staff,...);
- the market orientation (education, research and information markets);
- the society needs, the educational aims, the standards (long term strategy).
It certainly could be very interesting to develop some international research work on this subject and to propose new schemes for the management of new education and information institutions.
CONCLUSION
The world obviously has changed and is rapidly changing. But do our universities, our engineering schools take into account these transformations? Do they adapt their approaches of education to the new information society?
We, engineering educators, are forced to imagine, create and develop new ways for the education and training of future engineers. We have to integrate approaches allowing autonomous self-learning practices and facilitating the generalized and open access to information and knowledge. We have to invent and set-up the methodological and pedagogical components of a new educational perspective, which better links information and knowledge, first education and life-long education, personal and professional developments and a global comprehension of the society transformations. We, at last, have to define the appropriate conditions of a new management of the education and information resources valid at various scales, from local to national or even world-wide levels.
Engineering education ... how can we look at it now without closing our eyes to society' changes and needs ... how can we think about it taking into account the revolution of the new information and communication technologies?