We all face urgent global needs (e.g., to minimize and reverse climate change and environmental pollution, develop sustainable forms of energy, provide universally affordable health care, housing, and food, etc.), and the need for adequate numbers of engineers with the skills required to meet the global needs. This will require that we educate our students to possess problem solving skills using creative, critical entrepreneurial multidisciplinary, collaborative, and metacognitive thinking. This is not possible with traditional methods of teaching using conventional textbooks and assessment techniques.

We must use student centric techniques to enable them to be self-directed learners and problem solvers. They should be able to tackle a new problem and figure out what they need to learn to solve it, where to get the necessary information, and how to work their way to a solution, all without professors and textbooks.  Such techniques include inductive teaching, active and cooperative learning, technology-assisted instruction, experiential and service learning, formative and summative assessment of learning and high-level thinking and problem-solving skills, instructional design, and instructional development. 

Several people around the world have been using these approaches. In order to encourage more educators to change to student centric teaching techniques, we need to provide a global forum for sharing best practices and encouraging collaboration. IFEES, GEDC and IUCEE propose to partner in creating a platform for such sharing and collaboration among global educators. The central element of this will be to build a global community of practice through a series of bi-monthly webinars by educators from around the world. 

Two of the leading practitioners of student centric teaching techniques are Dr. Rebecca Brent and Dr. Richard Felder. They have been practicing, as well as training others, in the use of such techniques for several decades. Drs. Brent and Felder are coauthors of Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide (JosseyBass, 2016, https://educationdesignsinc.com/book/ ). Separately and together, they have presented over 500 workshops on effective teaching, course design, mentoring and supporting new faculty members, and STEM faculty development, on campuses and at conferences around the world. More about them is given below.