Special Session: Potential Futures for Engineering Education through Scenario Planning

Various technological, economic, and social developments may radically reshape engineering and computer science education in the next 20 to 30 years. Leaders in engineering education, such as IEEE, that play key roles must decide how they will innovate and support initiatives to improve engineering education. Decisions must be guided by both historical trends and potential future evolutions of engineering education. Since the future cannot be predicted, the organizations may be interested in methodologies to help make decisions. IEEE's Curriculum and Pedagogical Committee (CPC), which is charged with helping IEEE make solid decisions, engaged in a scenario planning exercise to help understand how various influences and trajectories could influence engineering education. Scenario planning methodology has been used by many organizations making long-term investments, to understand how future developments could be taken into account when making key decisions. The purpose of the workshop is to allow participants to experience some aspects of the scenario planning methodology and to compare their results with the results generated by the CPC.