2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering educators are struggling more and more with underprepared students. The typical approach has been to engage in teaching innovations with the goal of educating innovative engineers. But what if the issue is not the teaching, but the learning? To create a framework for educating innovative engineers, this paper seeks to catalogue how innovative engineers were educated. A framework for shaping self-directed, lifelong learners, developed by reviewing the learning strategies, activities, and mindsets of self-directed lifelong learners, can usefully evaluate learning activities developed for engineering students. Starting with the current need as identified by engineering societies and continuing through living expert learners, engineering giants, great American autodidacts, Renaissance and Reformation learners, the commonalities of lifelong learners clearly illustrate the features of the framework. Innovative engineers are committed to self-directed lifelong learning (typically through reading, notetaking, and practice), are curious about the outside world, and desire to shape that world according to its creation order. Lifelong learners also benefit from camaraderie between fellow learners and sympathy from faculty and mentors. From this understanding, engineering educators can develop activities and assignments that foster these attitudes and enforce practice in the activities of lifelong learners.