Center LEARN delegation attends SEFI's 50th annual conference
Joelyn de Lima© 2022 EPFL
A delegation of eleven members of the Center LEARN, comprised of curriculum designers, scientists, and educational advisors, attended the 50th annual conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), which was held from September 19 to 22 in Barcelona, Spain.
Considered the most important event of its kind in Europe, this year's edition invited the 450 participants from over 50 different nations to shape the future of engineering education through roughly 60 sessions and more than 300 papers.
On this occasion, Cécile Hardebolle from the Center for Digital Education (CEDE), Joelyn De Lima, Natascia Petringa, Reinaldo Saavedra, Roland Tormey, Vivek Ramachandran, and Nihat Kotluk from the Teaching Support Center (CAPE), Alexandra Niculescu, Helena Kovacs, Siara Isaac and Yousef Jalali from the Center LEARN’s internal mission team, presented their research and findings through three workshops and four abstracts covering topics including the role of ethics in the training of future engineers and the development of transversal skills.
This meeting was also marked by the appointment of Helena Kovacs as co-chair of the Special Interest Group (SIG) on Ethics alongside Diana Martin, researcher in engineering ethics education and education for sustainable development at the Eindhoven University of Technology. She succeeds Roland Tormey, Director of CAPE, who has led the group for the past three years and contributed significantly to the strength of the network. Roland was also the very first guest of the new podcast "European Engineering Educators" produced by SEFI and launched in conjunction with the Conference. Listen to Roland Tormey in episode 1.
Special Interest Groups address specific topics in engineering education, allowing SEFI to focus on each given topic in more detail. These groups are created and modified based on need and demand. There are currently twelve such groups.
The objectives of the group are to establish a network of educators and practicing engineers who wish to develop ethics education, to stimulate discussion, opinion formation and decision making on the needs and opportunities for ethics in engineering curricula. It also aims to share experiences, practices, developments and teaching resources in ethics education and ethical leadership.
Conference proceedings will be published soon by SEFI. The next annual conference will be held in Dublin in September 2023, hosted by Technological University Dublin.