A model for transforming engineering education through group learning

Engineering educators at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) have successfully implemented pedagogical change. They now use group-based, student-centred, inquiry-driven approaches in each year of their electrical engineering programmes. Their objective is to foster students' professional and personal skills (e.g., teamwork, communication, creativity, critical thinking, ethics, self-directed learning). This paper explores how change was achieved. It provides graphic models that extend the authors' prior research by incorporating the standard adoption of innovation curve. Results indicate that top-down capacity-building programmes and policies stimulated bottom-up change-transformative change initiated by a group of individuals working closely with a champion and a sage advisor. Leaders at DIT are beginning to promote wider and deeper transformation by introducing the change model into new contexts.