Incorporating Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Methods in a Project-based Learning Course to Foster Global Leading Engineers

As the global community finds itself confronting unprecedented environmental, socioeconomic and technological problems and needs, engineering education is also faced with the challenges of meeting current and future demands to produce engineers who can work in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams globally. This work-in-progress paper describes how to incorporate intercultural and interdisciplinary methods into project-based learning in engineering education, taking the Flying Robot Program at the School of Engineering, Nagoya University, as an example. It also analytically reframes an emerging educational model-the differential approach, which contrasts with the conventional integrative approach by incorporating the relevant skills and mindset-in the context of Japanese engineering education.