Productivity in engineering education

Innovation is progressing today faster than ever before by integration of knowledge from different domains. This makes agile management of the individual competence portfolio a core competency of engineers. The borders between economics, mechanical and electrical engineering as well as computer, natural and social sciences must be crossed without losing basic qualifications that form the foundation of being an archetype of engineer. One of the core functions of universities is to teach knowledge and provide training that allows development of the individual competence portfolio. Work as an engineer is focused on solving problems with regard to available resources. Solution finding is determined by analysis, modeling, experiment and design. Needed information must be identified, filtered, understood and applied in a timely manner. Therefore engineering education must enable engineers to acquire and process relevant information as complete as possible and on adequate level of detail on time. Productivity is well defined in economical or technical context as output per input. In the context of engineering education output relates to educational standards and educational quality, while input is determined by invested time, money and expertise. One of the main educational challenges today is to improve productivity in engineering education. In this paper approaches to define and measure productivity in engineering education are discussed. It is presented how TU Berlin faces the challenge of increasing productivity in engineering education in a pilot project. Methods to improve productivity are described and the experiences during implementation in the curriculum are shared.