2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

With the substantial change of modern knowledge production mode, societal progress is characterised by complexity, uncertainty and diversity, etc. The systematic and complex nature of engineering in such a context requires engineering students to have interdisciplinary and cross-fertilisation knowledge and ability, especially for junior engineering students, the cultivation of interdisciplinary knowledge system is very crucial for their future engineering practice and the formation of engineering outlook. Due to the heterogeneity of different engineering degrees, the method and effectiveness of interdisciplinary education in a single engineering degree are limited, and how to cultivate engineering students' interdisciplinary knowledge ability in a long-term, systematic and comprehensive way is an urgent issue.

In this study, we focus on the engineering minor degree ‘Advanced Engineering Education Class’ of Zhejiang University in China as the research object, which was established in 1994 and is the first engineering minor degree in China. This work uses the methods of exploratory case study and questionnaire survey to acquire 10 pieces of specific information on the degree from official websites and internal channels, and then sends 118 valid questionnaires to prior students (focused on classes from 2007 to 2023). We have summarised 4 characteristics of this engineering minor degree: 1) A personalised curriculum system. Students can select the appropriate interdisciplinary curricular system from modules such as "Engineering Fundamentals", "Engineering Management", "Engineering Design", and "Engineering Interdisciplinarity", thereby improving the education of engineering ethics. 2) A system towards national key engineering projects. Under the direction of the chief expert and the college-industry tutor group, students select their own themes and develop methodical interdisciplinary knowledge and ability in engineering projects.3) An interdisciplinary atmosphere. Students in the class come from a variety of engineering majors, and tutor groups come from many engineering research paths, resulting in an interdisciplinary environment of unfettered discovery and inclusive literacy.4) A long-cycle training system. The minor degree is two years long, and each course is one year long, allowing the multidisciplinary knowledge system to be consolidated through long-term projects and courses.

We discovered that 30 years after the establishment, construction, and reform of the‘Advanced Engineering Education Class’ minor degree in engineering education, students who have earned it have higher rates of further study, are more internationalized, have attempted more interdisciplinary research, and have achieved more engineering successes. More than 1/3 of the employed students went on to become exceptional engineers or engineering experts. At the same time, we recognized the challenges and limitations encountered in this minor degree using questionnaire analysis. This work advances interdisciplinary engineering education by providing more realistic examples of engineering minor degrees in interdisciplinary engineering education research.