Engineering Education in the 21st Century: Creativity, Collaboration, Invention

Abstract

Engineers need to be the artists of the future, creatively solving problems of complex systems, environments, and cultures in a globally connected world. The nature of these problems demands that the engineer make connections between what may appear divergent and polarized. Why do artists study methods of creativity yet engineers do not? What possibilities open up when classrooms around the world teach collaboratively? In a new engineering program at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, engineers are studying Western figure drawing while also learning collaboratively with classrooms from America. This partnering invites the unexpected by mixing up the various contexts of the learners and facilitating insights. The Nanyang engineering program is giving students the ability to use traditional figure drawing while also learning collaboratively with classrooms from America.