How to teach resilience thinking in engineering education

Figures & data

Table 1. Intended learning outcomes at course level (see also Winkens & Leicht-Scholten, 2022).

Level of complexity	Taxonomy	Learning outcomes
	Creating	Students develop solution approaches to foster resilience for crisis situations.
	Evaluating	Students assess existing crisis management approaches regarding their resilience potential. Students reflect on resilience-oriented approaches and ways of thinking in their future work as engineers. Moreover, they reflect on the relevance of resilience-oriented approaches to local and global crises.
	Analyzing	Students analyze different scenarios with regard to their resilience effects.
	Applying	Students apply resilience-oriented approaches to practice-related decisions.
	Understanding	Students outline, compare and contrast different interdisciplinary discourses regarding the concept of resilience. They understand the relevance of crises in the 21st century.
	Remembering	Students define resilience with its various conceptions.

Table 2. Assessment changes.

	2021	2022
Case	One given case (COVID-19)	Students chose the case on their own
Method	Scenario planning	Scenario planning and resilience analysis of past disaster events
Feedback	Voluntary feedback	Obligatory midterm feedback
Assessment	recorded team presentation, written team reports and peer-assessment	recorded team presentation, written team reports, peer-assessment and reflective diaries

Figure 1. Self-assessment results for content- and methods-related resilience competencies before (n = 21) and after (n = 13) the course 2022.

Table 3. Overall course schedule.

Week	Topic	Diary
1	Introduction and Motivation	X
2	Terms and Basics: Resilience and Risk	X
3	Methods and Tools	X
4	Groupwork	X
5	Resilience in Engineering	X
6	Urban Resilience	X
7	Midterm Session (mandatory)
7	Group Work
8	Resilience Thinking	X
9	Group Work
10	Group Work	X
11	Submission of Presentations	X
12	Watching the Presentations of the Other Groups
13	Plenary Discussion	X
14	Feedback and Closure	X
14	Submission of Documentations and Diaries

Table 4. Items of the pre-post survey (* marks items that were only queried in 2022).

Item		Question
R1	Resilience-related: Content and methods	I know scientific discourses with regard to resilience.
R2		I am able to explain the term ‘resilience’ in my own words.
R3		I understand the relevance of resilience with regard to global risks and crises
R4		I understand the relevance of resilient systems for my work as an engineer
R5		I am able to apply the concept of resilience to different situations
R6		I am able to analyze scenarios with regard to their implications for resilience
R7		I am able to evaluate existing crisis management approaches regarding their potential for resilience
P1*	Professional Competencies	I am able to assess my learning progress and check it independently.*
P2		I feel confident in giving a digital presentation and presenting my findings convincingly.
P3		It is easy for me to exchange ideas, communicate and discuss with my fellow students.
P4		It is easy for me to resolve conflicts.
P5		I can empathize with other perspectives and take them into account when designing processes.
P6		I can cope well with sudden crises.
P7		I am resistant and adaptable.
P8*		I learn from my mistakes.*
P9*		I consider myself to be resilient.*
P10		I am motivated to look into the topic of ‘resilience’.

Table 5. Results of the pre-post survey, bold: significant at p < 0.01, * only evaluated in 2022.

Item	p-value (Wilcoxon signed-rank test)	Mean (pre)	SD (pre)	Mean (post)	SD (post)
R1	0.0018	1.64	0.67	4.36	0.50
R2	0.0041	3.18	1.08	4.64	0.50
R3	0.0042	2.82	1.25	4.73	0.57
R4	0.0027	3.09	1.04	4.83	0.40
R5	0.0026	2.36	0.81	4.36	0.50
R6	0.0018	2.00	0.89	4.82	0.52
R7	0.0041	1.82	0.75	4.73	0.70
P1*	0.0209	4.09	0.54	4.36	0.47
P2	0.0010	3.55	0.82	4.09	0.69
P3	0.0089	3.36	1.12	4.55	0.65
P4	0.0051	3.36	0.92	4.73	0.47
P5	0.0088	4.00	0.63	4.55	0.40
P6	0.0168	3.27	1.01	4.27	0.75
P7	0.0209	3.82	0.75	4.27	0.69
P8*	0.0131	4.09	0.54	4.82	0.42
P9*	0.0445	3.70	0.67	4.18	0.60
P10	0.9772	4.73	0.47	4.64	0.50

Figure 2. Self-assessment results for content- and methods-related resilience competencies before (n = 20) and after (n = 12) the course 2021.

Figure 3. Self-assessment results for professional competencies before (n = 21) and after (n = 13) the course 2022.

Figure 4. Self-assessment results for professional competencies before (n = 20) and after (n = 12) the course 2021.

Figure A1. Full task 2022.

Table A1. Questions for the reflective diaries (adapted from Wallin & Adawi, 2018; Wallin, Adawi, & Gold, 2016.)

Week	Topic	Questions
1	Your expectations	What were your motivations for taking the course? What are you particularly looking forward to in the course ‘Resilience and Socio-Technical Systems’? Why do you think this part will be so interesting? What do you think will be important for you to get the most out of the course? How do you think the course can help you for the future?
2–3	Your learning experience	What was the most important thing you realized/learned this week? Why do you think it is important? What helped you to recognize this? What can you do to create/have more learning experiences like this?
4	Your next steps	What do you think will be the most important next step in your group’s work? Why do you think it will be important? How will you approach this step? What are some possible risks? How do you feel about it?
5	Learning from scientific literature	What was/is the most difficult part of obtaining information from the scientific literature about your case study? In what ways was/is it difficult and how did you approach this challenge? How did you work with the literature? What was your most important learning outcome from reading/viewing the scientific articles? To what extent do you think literature search and review are important? How will this help you for the case study?
6	Progress of your case study	What have been the most important steps you have taken so far in the group work? How are these steps related to the overall task/work? How will they help you with the next steps you need to take? How would you rate the progress of your work so far? Do you feel you are on the right track? What important step comes next – and why?
7	Midterm Session
8	Your challenges this week	What was the biggest challenge this week? Why was it a challenge? How did you overcome this challenge? How was it important to your progress? Would you approach the challenge again in the same way or differently?
9	Groupwork
10	Progress of your case study	What have been the most important steps you have taken so far in the group work? How are these steps related to the overall task/work? How will they help you with the next steps you need to take? How would you rate the progress of your work so far? Do you feel you are on the right track?
11	Learning from failure	Were there things that did not work? How important are these things for your elaboration? How did you proceeded to solve the problems? How did you find out the reason for the failure? What did you learn from the experience? Do you think you could have avoided the problems?
12	Viewing the other group works
13	The key message of your case study	What is the key message of your elaboration? How does it relate to your original plan and the focus of the seminar? How do you feel about the outcome of your group work? What would you do differently if you were to do it again?
14	Retrospective	When you think back to your expectations at the beginning – were they met? What did you take away from the course overall? To what extent can the course be useful for you personally and for your professional future?

Table A2. Shapiro-Wilk-Test.

Item	p-value (Shapiro-wilk-test, pre)	p-value (Shapiro-wilk-test, post)
R1	0.0062	0.0001
R2	0.0474	0.0001
R3	0.0117	0.00001
R4	0.0230	0.0001
R5	0.0689	<0.0001
R6	0.0080	0.0001
R7	0.0183	0.0184
P1	0.0010	<0.0001
P2	0.1504	0.0005
P3	0.1405	0.0076
P4	0.2172	<0.0001
P5	0.0080	<0.0001
P6	0.1341	0.0183
P7	0.0183	0.0025
P8	0.0010	<0.0001
P9	0.0154	0.0043
P10	0.00001	<0.0001

Winkens, A., & Leicht-Scholten, C. (2022). Local Resilience Strategies for COVID-19 – a PBL Engineering Case Study. 18th International CDIO Conference, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland.

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Wallin, P., & Adawi, T. (2018). The reflective diary as a method for the formative assessment of self-regulated learning. European Journal of Engineering Education, 43(4), 507–521. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2017.1290585

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Wallin, P., Adawi, T., & Gold, J. (2016). Reflective diaries – a tool for promoting and probing student learning. 12th International CDIO Conference, Turku University of Applied Sciences, Turku, Finland.

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Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within this article.