Digital Engineering: Competence Acquisition and Program Development as an Open Co-Creation Process

DIGITAL ENGINEERING: COMPETENCE ACQUISITION AND PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AS AN OPEN CO-CREATION PROCESS Vanessa Mai, Susanne Wolf, Paul Varney, Martin Bonnet, & Anja Richert Faculty of Process Engineering, Energy and Mechanical Systems, TH Köln (Germany) Abstract Dealing with the increasingly complex interrelationships in companies, technologies and markets requires engineers to have a holistic, systemic understanding of digital change. Future engineers need future skills and must be able to react to ever faster changing technical requirements by independently expanding their knowledge, developing (technology-based) solution strategies as well as designing, evaluating and communicating these with regard to social, ecological and cultural aspects and requirements. In order to integrate these future skills into existing curricula, study programs must be designed in such a way that they are permeable to continuous and agile adaptation in relation to new knowledge and new technologies. This process can only succeed if universities see themselves as open learning systems that promote co-creation processes among all university stakeholders. The Faculty of Process Engineering, Energy and Mechanical Systems at TH Köln/University of Applied Sciences has recently recognized the resulting need for a transformation process in program development and has further developed the consecutive master's program "Mechanical Engineering/Smart Systems", in which agile learning environments and innovation spaces are created. However, the redesign and further development of modules is not enough. A holistic, systemic understanding in dealing with transformative technologies requires a cultural change in which lecturers and students shape the digital transformation on an equal footing. In a joint learning and research process, they iteratively and agilely test which competencies best prepare students for an increasingly digitalized workplace and which analog and virtual learning spaces this requires. As part of the project "Digital Engineering - Competence Acquisition for Mechanical Engineers in the Digital Age", the faculty is currently implementing the Technology Area, a measure whose aim is to accompany these digital transformation processes at the faculty and to provide lecturers and students with the necessary freedom to experiment with new technologies in teaching. Here, subject-specific teaching and research concepts for the use of new technologies are to be developed and tested together in a co-creation process. The first concepts developed in the Technology Area, as well as other Best Practices from the faculty, will be presented in the paper. These include the Mixed-Reality-Game FutureING, the Serious Game Worlds of Materials and the development of a StudiCoachBot. In order to promote co-creation processes within and outside the university, a Digitalization Conference was held in May as part of the project to present innovative and forward-looking innovations in engineering education. The reflection of all of the presented initiatives is structurally anchored and professionalized by the House of Excellence in Engineering Education.