Future perspectives on Challenge Driven Education : Challenging how we perceive and engage external stakeholders in Tanzania and Sweden

Abstract: The engineering education has changed and evolved over decades in harmonywith societies challenges. Today, sustainable development is of great importanceand one way of equipping future engineers with the competencies to tackle these challenges is through Challenge Driven Education (CDE). CDE is a relatively new educational concept which brings together universities andexternal stakeholders to jointly foster the engineers of tomorrow. The research focuses on the challenge owner’s perspective, which is a sub-category of external stakeholder. The challenge owner could be a company or organisation providing the students with challenges and also takes an active role in the students path to solve them. Through qualitative interviews in Sweden and Tanzania this study investigates some aspects of the CDE concept and develops a product in the form of a guide.First, it was investigated which competencies for sustainability that could be considered important in future engineers, according to interviewees. It was also investigated which competencies were developed during CDE projects. Results show that UNESCO’s key competencies correlates well with interviewees views, justifying the legitimacy of the framework. However, some skills and attributes mentioned in interviews lie outside of UNESCO’s framework but where still considered important. This implies the need to supplement orevolve the framework in order to be a more comprehensive tool for improving CDE and the engineering education. Secondly, several differences on how CDE is portrayed and executed where found in the interviews. From the Tanzanian context a somewhat limited view of the challenge owner was identified and findings show possibilities of broadening the perspective of the challenge owner role. Also, findings shows a need to emphasise the importance of sustainable development and societal contributions in the future development of CDE. Lastly, in order to facilitate communication with potential challenge owners in future CDE collaborations in Tanzania, the need for a guide was identified. Using an iterative design method, a guide based on interviewees feedback and the findings from this study was created. The main purpose is to present a widened view of CDE and to inspire potential challenge owners to join.