My publications
Reports and papers
Navigating the Landscape of Higher Engineering Education
Coping with decades of accelerating change ahead (2020)
The report offers a forward-thinking perspective on higher engineering education. Its ultimate goal is to bridge the gap between visionaries, thought leaders and academic teaching staff on the shop floor. It addresses the changing roles in the engineering profession, the shifts in mindset and various kinds of literacies in engineering curricula. It discusses the greater responsibility students have for their own education and learning process, the importance of professional skills, and the integration of digital transformations and responsible engineering in curricula. Last but not least it looks at the essence of impactful education, the need to upskill staff, and the impact of the vastly altered population of learners, mainly Generation-Z students.
The concluding chapter is a compass for educational leaders. It has four compass points: Skillsets and mindsets for 21st century engineers; Pedagogical and technological innovations in education; Continuous/life time education: continuous upskilling and relearning; and Educational strategy and leadership, and gives 24 recommendations for the development of educational vision and strategy and their implementation in organisations and curricula.
Published in TU Delft OPEN Publishing since June 21, 2023
Engineering Education in a Rapidly Changing World
Rethinking the Vision for Higher Engineering Education - Second Revised Edition (2016)
The report takes a horizon-scanning approach, the report articulated vision statements for the attributes that engineering students will have to acquire for a successful career. The report stirred considerable debate across and beyond TU Delft and is being used by many universities to inspire educational leaders and teaching staff to rethink their programmes.
Published in TU Delft OPEN Publishing since June 21, 2023
S&T education for twenty-first century Europe
Aldert Kamp in collaboration with CESAER Task Force "S&T Education for the 21st Century" (2019)
The paper explores the trends in engineering sciences and technology, education and society, and provides orientation how universities of S&T and our association can change education in Europe for the better.
It provides an overview of what literacies, skillsets and mindsets the students need to be able to address the grand challenges of today’s word. It points out the fundamental changes that universities can make in what and how they teach to better prepare their graduates for the increasing and different demands of the new world of work. Moreover, it addresses the developments in online education, continuous learning, strengthening of university-industry collaboration, improving the competencies of academic staff.
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CDIO. Can we continue the way we are?
Kamp A (2021) Proceedings of the 17th international CDIO conference, hosted online by Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, 21-23 June 2021
The paper addresses the status quo as perceived by the CDIO member institutions (why we do what we do), the shift in engagement by newcomers and retirements from the community, the future outlook (who do we want to be in 2030) and the reformulation of the mission and vision statements for the CDIO Initiative. The paper gives an inventory of breakthroughs that are necessary to move CDIO back into a leadership position of innovative engineering education and a set of clear recommendations for Council and community members.
Watch the 7-minute paper presentation here.
Engineer of the Future,
envisioning higher engineering education in 2035
Klaassen, R., Van Dijk, M., Hoope, R., & Kamp, A. (2019). Engineer of the Future: envisioning higher engineering education in 2035. Delft: TU Delft Open.
This report unfolds our vision on engineering education in 2035 and beyond. It starts by introducing the innovation method used to make sense of this future context. We’ve created an image of the future of engineering in the form of eleven driving forces, show how these driving forces relate to each other, and present a framework of eight roles engineers have in this future context. The report concludes with the outline of a future concept that enables the future behaviours society expects engineers to have, and accommodates moving between them, what is called the Personology Arena.
Klaassen, R., van Dijk, M., Hoope, R., Ceulemans, D., Kamp, A., Jacobs, M. & van der Sanden, M. (2018) The 14th International CDIO Conference Proceedings (Kanazawa, Japan)
This paper presents a vision on how engineers can play different roles in future society 2030. First we predicted how society in the Netherlands (in relation to Europe and the rest of the world) is going to develop and how future engineers will behave, act and take their position in this future world. We unraveled the complexity of future society step-by-step to understand the diversity of engineer(ing)-behaviour. Clustering these factors into ten driving forces helped us to discover three independent determining dimensions, defining eight possible engineer-behaviours. These eight roles are further illustrated with accompanying skills and pathways to support role development.
Making curricular change: Case report of a radical reconstruction process
Kamp A & Klaassen R. (2013) Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference (Boston, USA)
Educational change is technically relatively simple but socially complex. Making effective change in engineering curricula is problematic and often fails by too high ambitions, too short development time frames, inconsistent design and a lack of a systems approach, but also by poor leadership, lack of ownership and low faculty engagement.
In the period 2006-2010 TU Delft Faculty of Aerospace Engineering has reestablished the profile of the bachelor and made a radical reconstruction by recalibrating the content and introducing a state-of-the-art active teaching approach.
The paper gives an inside look in the reconstruction process. It shows that curriculum change is engineering and not science; it is politics and not always rational.
Impact of global forces and empowering situations on engineering education in 2030
Kamp A & Klaassen R. (2016) Proceedings of the 12th international CDIO conference (Turku, Finland)
The world around us is changing at a dizzying pace by the globalisation and digitalisation, the horizontalisation of the socio-economic world, and the blending of technical, economical and societal cultures. The ways we communicate, work, play, travel and do business have changed dramatically, and are expected to change at an even faster pace in the future. We have entered an era where higher engineering education has to move from content coverage to content mastery. Are our programmes good enough to absorb the changes in the world 10 to 15 years from now?
This paper discusses the results of an exploration by a Think Tank of academic staff about “what future engineers should learn in higher engineering education in 2030”. Key issues are the embedding of personal development in a meaningful way - the teaching of the “whole engineer”, the creation of purposeful engineering profiles for society, keeping them specific enough to create in-depth learning. A popular version of the paper about the Think Tank can be downloaded here.
Emerging Technologies in Engineering Education: Can we make it work?
De Vries, P, Klaassen R, Kamp A; (2017) Proceedings of the 13th international CDIO conference (Calgary, Canada)
This paper deals with an explorative research in the use of emerging technologies for teaching and learning.
The exploration starts with an assessment about what kind of technologies are at stake and what their contribution might be for education.
The guiding questions are: what is the perceived value for the students; what is the value for the teacher and what are the consequences for the organisation?
The full report of the research in Emerging Technologies in Engineering Education is available here.
The CDIO Syllabus 3.0 - An Updated Statement of Goals
Malmqvist, J., Kamp, A. & More Authors, (2022) 36 p. Proceedings of the 18th International CDIO Conference, hosted by Reykjavik University, Reykjavik Iceland, June 13-15, 2022.
This paper reports an update of the CDIO Syllabus to version 3.0. There are three main external drivers that motivate the changes: sustainability, digitalisation, and acceleration. There is also an internal
driver in the form of lessons learned within the CDIO community, from using the Syllabus in curriculum and course development. Approximately 70 updates are proposed, amongst them.
three additions on the X.X level, namely 1.4 Knowledge of Social Sciences and Humanities,
3.1 Teamwork and Collaboration, and 5.3 Research.
Cognitive, Social and Emotional Aspectds of Interdisciplinary Learning
Renate Klaassen, Birgit de Bruin, Nanneke de Fouw, Aldert Kamp, Hans Hellendoorn, Proceedings of the 16th International CDIO Conference, hosted on-line by Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, 8-10 June 2020
In Joint Interdisciplinary Project (JIP) at TU Delft master students contribute to solving impactful, real-life technological challenges, provided and supervised by experts and leaders of enowned companies and the university. The projects not only demand good engineering working knowledge but also a solid grounding in interdisciplinary and systems thinking, and both knowledge and mindsets of innovation and entrepreneurial behaviour. The paper presents the evaluation of the JIP course design through a pre- and post-test survey amongst students about their cognitive, social and emotional expectations and challenges in interdisciplinary working and the highlights of the learning process during the programme.
Educating engineering practice in six design projects in a row
Kamp A. (2013) Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference (Boston, USA)
Tomorrow’s engineers are required to have a good balance between deep working knowledge of engineering sciences and engineering skills. In the Bachelor in Aerospace Engineering at TU Delft, students are educated to master these competences so that they are ready to engineer when they graduate. The bachelor curriculum has three mainstreams of about equal study load: Aerospace Design, Aerospace Engineering & Technology, and Basic Engineering Sciences. The Aerospace Design stream is built up semester after semester of a design project and an accompanying design course.
The main objectives of the design projects are related to contextual learning, learning by doing together, and learning and practicing academic and engineering skills, and being a mental organiser for the students.
The projects make use of student project spaces in a dedicated building for collaborative learning, and laboratories like wind tunnels, a structures and materials laboratory, a study collection of aircraft and spacecraft parts and subsystems, and a flight simulator.
Industrial internships as integrated learning experiences with rich learning outcomes and spin-offs
Kamp A & Verdegaal F. (2015) Proceedings of the 11th international CDIO conference (Chengdu, China)
This paper describes how TU Delft Faculty of Aerospace Engineering has implemented the internship in its programme, including its assignments and assessments with feedback from and to the students, with the aim to have real impact on student development. It describes how company feedback is provided to the students and how this is also fed into the education quality assurance cycle, and in what respect the internship can stimulate the collaboration with industry to achieve a win-win situation.
An excellent and professional organisation is a critical success factor. The logistic challenge to coordinate the planning, organisation and assessment of more than 300 - 400 Master students per year, who take an internship all over the globe, is big and demanding.
Delft Aerospace engineering integrated curriculum
Kamp A. (2011) Proceedings of the 7th International CDIO Conference (Copenhagen, Denmark)
The complex multidisciplinary problems and challenges in our society require deep problem solvers in science, management and engineering who are also capable of interacting with and understanding specialists from a wide range of disciplines and functional areas. Industry refers to these people as T-shaped professionals.
The T-shaped professional model has been the reference for the bachelor and master curricula in Aerospace Engineering at Delft University of Technology. The bachelor provides the broad academic background in the domain of aerospace engineering. The life cycle of the engineering process forms the cement and thread for the themes of the bachelor curriculum. The bachelor develops the academic intellectual skills and attitudes to analyse, apply, synthesize, and design, and prepares for the master. The master programme aims to develop the basic competences acquired in the bachelor to a higher level in terms of knowledge, critical reflection, making judgements and working independently.
This curricular framework gives the bachelor a unique and coherent profile and identity. It teaches state-of-the-art content that is interwoven with design projects and trainings for personal and system building skills, with a focus on the aircraft and spacecraft throughout the programmes.
The CDIO framework and new perspectives on technological innovation
Smulders, F., Kamp, A. & Fortin, C. (2018) The 14th International CDIO Conference: Proceedings (Kanazawa, Japan)
Technological innovation happens on a daily basis all around us. Yet, in our educational programs there is rarely any attention paid to what this is and how this unfolds over time in real life.
This paper aims to initiate a discussion on what technological innovation is and how this could fit within the CDIO-framework. The paper ends by proposing a possible path to bring the subject of technological innovation within the confines of our educational curricula, without too much cutting on the subjects that we are teaching. Its base comes from the idea that what we are teaching today is the result of a technological innovation process of yesterday.
Educate for Technological Innovation
Smulders, F., Broekhans, B., Kamp, A., Hellendoorn, H., & Welleman, H. (2019). In P. Badke Schaub, & M. Kleinsmann (Eds.), Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Engineering Design, ICED19 (pp. 479-488) (Delft, the Netherlands)
At Polytechnics design & engineering students are taught about state-of-the-art technical knowledge. Students become qualified engineers and learn to innovate artifacts related to their domain. Not taught is how to develop new engineering knowledge within a multidisciplinary context of stakeholders, companies and regulations. In short, students don't learn to innovate technology.
The paper describes a project that aims to educate all TU Delft graduate students in the verb of innovating technology, that is, the development of new technologies from inventions in the labs to full- fledged application in business.
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Towards CDIO Standards 3.0
Malmqvist, J., Knutson Wedel, M., Lundqvist, U., Edström, K., Rosén, A., Fruergaard Astrup, T., Vigild, M. E., Munkebo Hussman, P., Kamp, A. & More Authors, (2019) 23 p.
This paper is about updating the CDIO Standards to version 3.0. The paper reviews the potential change drivers that motivate a revision of
the Standards. The paper identifies criticism of the Standards, as well as ideas for development,that have been codified as proposed additional CDIO Standards. With references to these
change drivers, five areas are identified for the revision: sustainability, digitalisation of teaching and learning; service; and faculty competence. A revised version of the Standards
is presented. In addition a new category of Standards is established, “optional standards”. They complement the12 “basic” Standards, and serve to guide educational development and profiling beyond the current Standards.
External publications
Interesting reports about curricular change and state-of-the-art engineering education
Building the Systems Engineering Workforce of the Future
A complement to the INCOSE Systems Engineering Vision 2035
Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Heinz Stoewer M.Sc. SAC Gmbh, & TU DELFT David Nichols JPL/Caltech
The intention of this White Paper (published May 2022), in view of a shortage of experienced System Engineers and the growing need for such competencies, is to solicit the endorsement and application of its guiding principles by professional organizations, industry, academia and government agencies.
Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work
Article about a McKinsey Report (2021) addressing specific competencies citizens need to become 'future-proof' in the workplace
To future-proof citizens’ ability to work, they will require new skills—but which ones? A survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries suggests those that governments may wish to prioritise. The research identified a set of 56 foundational skills that will benefit all citizens and showed that higher proficiency in them is already associated with a higher likelihood of employment, higher incomes, and job satisfaction. The research suggests governments could consider reviewing and updating curricula to focus more strongly on a number of specific competencies, and reform lifelong learning schemes.
Global state of the art in engineering education
Dr. Ruth Graham (2018); MIT School of Engineering
Dr Ruth Graham interviewed 50 thought leaders in the field, and focussed on the undergraduate programmes offered by the aforementioned institutions. Initiated by MIT as part of their own engineering education development (or NEET – New Engineering Education Transformation), the report examines the institutions’ world-leading undergraduate programmes and pedagogy through case study examples, analysing in-depth exactly how students are being taught differently.
Dervojeda, Kristina; et al (PwC); European Union, Brussels, January 2020
The Guidelines aim to provide key stakeholders with an analytical base for developing curricula for the new industrial age. The objective is to offer a source of inspiration, conceptual guidance and good practice examples.
Achieving excellence in engineering education: the ingredients of successful change.
Ruth Graham (2012); London: The Royal Academy of Engineering.
Engineering is vital to successful, sustainable civilisation. So much rests on the shoulders of future generations of engineers that we must give them the best possible foundation to their professional lives.
This means ensuring that engineering graduates can apply theoretical knowledge to industrial problems as well as exhibit theoretical understanding, creativity and innovation, team-working, technical breadth and business skills. To do this, engineering degree programmes must keep pace with the changing requirements of industry, with much more interaction between departments and industry