Tuning engineering education into the European higher education orchestra

Abstract

The ‘Bologna process’ is promoting fundamental changes throughout European higher education. Education ministers appear determined to reach, by 2010, a significant convergence of the national educational systems. This implies the necessity of adapting curricula in terms of structures, contents, learning attributes, learning tools and assessment methods. The EC ‘Tuning’ project was set up in order to investigate the feasibility of this process on the basis of ‘available experience and recent developments in several of the Member states… particularly from previous and on-going European co-operation in the context of the Socrates programme’. The Tuning project, initially aimed at five areas only (mathematics, geology, business, history, educational sciences), was later extended to other areas, including engineering: synergy groups were formed for this purpose. This paper summarizes the final report of the Engineering Synergy Group, which examined the ‘tuning’ of engineering education (EE) into European higher education, taking advantage of the work of previous and current thematic networks, such as H3E, EUCEET and E4. A set of recommendations is presented in the final section of the paper.

Acknowledgements

The authors want to thank each and every member of the Engineering Synergy Group of Tuning for contributing to the report summarized in this paper and, moreover: (i) all institutions of the SG members for allowing them to dedicate some of their time to the report; (ii) the Directorate General for Education and Culture of the EC for suggesting the need of such a group and hosting some of its meeting; and (iii) the Thematic Network E4 and specifically its President Claudio Borri, who has strongly supported this ‘side’ effort of the promoters of its five activities and allowed Ms Bricola to act as secretary of the SG as part of her E4 involvement.

Notes

The Appendix collects in alphabetical order all special terms designating European Union actions and programmes and all acronyms and abbreviations used.

The group included: Giuliano Augusti, Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’, IT; Anselmo Del Moral, Universidad de Deusto, Bilbao, ES; Anders Hagström, ETH Zürich, CH; Günter Heitmann, TU Berlin, DE; Francesco Maffioli, Politecnico di Milano, IT (co-ordinator); Iacint Manoliu, TU of Civil Engineering, Bucharest, RO; Brian Mulhall, University of Surrey, UK; Matti Pursula, Helsinki University of Technology, FI; Reinhardt Schmidt, Università di Firenze, IT; Valeria Bricola, SEFI (secretary).

Indeed, GA, GH, AH, BM and MP are promoters of the five ‘activities’ of E4 (web site www.ing.unifi.it/tne4) and FM is its co-ordinator, while IM is the General Secretary of EUCEET. The engineering SG was even more representative because an active role within E4 is played by engineering education societies such as SEFI and CESAER, and professional organizations such as FEANI. (For the acronyms, see the Appendix.)

The documents produced within H3E can be found in E4 web site www.ing.unifi.it/tne4.

This list is similar to those quoted in section 2.1, and in particular to the list of ABET.

Making the relevant information available and easily understandable is a problem in itself: a ‘common language’ is needed to describe educational outcomes or qualification profiles in engineering. The formulation of a ‘glossary’ of terms relevant for EE is an objective that E4 has recently achieved (see web site www.ing.unifi.it/tne4). It could also be a great help for internal or external assessments aimed at ensuring adequate recognition as well as for quality maintenance and improvement.

The Washington Accord requires the eight signatories (national professional or accrediting organizations from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, UK, USA) to give the same professional recognition to holders of engineering degrees obtained in any one of these countries. Japan in June 2001 applied for ‘provisional status’ in the accord.