Reform and practice of the interdisciplinary competency cultivation model based on the German economic engineering talent training

Abstract

Engineering talent cultivation requires a balance of systemic knowledge, interdisciplinary understanding, and practicality skills. German economic engineering programs, centered on a ‘technology-science-humanities’ training model, have successfully shaped versatile engineering talents. By recognizing the deficiency in humanities and social sciences literacy—particularly in economics and management knowledge—among domestic engineering students, an interdisciplinary ‘Engineering + Economics/Management’ project-based curriculum has been introduced in Chinese-German Institute for Applied Engineering of Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, in which the German economic engineering training model was adopted. The program features a goal-oriented, modular, and flexible teaching system, in which a task-driven, progressive teaching approach that integrates theory and practice has been adopted. Furthermore, the program uses discipline competitions as the assessment method to evaluate the teaching quality and utilizes graduation projects as an important platform for continuously enhancing the students’ capability in interdisciplinary thinking and innovation. After years of practice, students’ comprehensive abilities have significantly improved, which can be seen from 131 awards in provincial or higher-level competition as well as innovation and entrepreneurship projects. The annual high-quality employment rate for graduates reached approximately 40.3%, far exceeding the university’s average level. The institute’s successful experience can serve as a valuable reference for cultivating humanities and social sciences literacy in engineering education in China.