Rethinking Engineering Education: Policy, Pedagogy, and Assessment During Crises

Abstract

Crises, especially the recent COVID-19 pandemic, have significantly impacted traditional teaching pedagogy, which often relies on face-to-face interactions. It is crucial that various stakeholders in education, including administrators, staff members, teachers, parents, learners, government officials, and so on, adapt to abrupt changes and disruptive transformations caused by emergency situations. In this article, we map out approaches to stakeholders that underpin teaching and learning effectiveness for engineering education (EE) in terms of policy, pedagogy, and assessment. The contributions of this article are threefold. First, we revisit a framework that enables administrators to devise policies for a secure and safe learning environment. Second, we propose Crisis-Resilience Pedagogy (CRP), which highlights and integrates important attributes such as adaptability, creativity, connectivity, diversity, and endurance into pedagogical components for effective teaching and learning. Third, we outline how to leverage education technology for outcomes assessment. To illustrate the challenges, solutions, and possibilities in this "new normal," we utilize and reflect on the results of an observational study conducted during the pandemic. Our approaches can be easily extended to other academic disciplines in other institutions to strengthen the resilience of our education systems in times of crisis.