SKILLS-BASED TRAINING AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS IN ENGINEER EDUCATION

Technical and professional knowledge will always be necessary to engineers' career development, especially in first-time job experiences. They are nevertheless insufficient to address all the relational dimensions at company-level. Skills and attitudes are to be developed for engineers to effectively perform and lead others into meaningful, responsibly-managed, sustainable endeavors. The Comprehensive Ontological Learning Model (MOAI, by its Spanish acronym) [1] uses active learning methodologies and puts the student as centerpiece of the education process. To achieve this the model stresses the importance of faculty engagement, faculty training and learning communities. This article presents some of the challenges of implementing MOAI at the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at Universidad San Sebastian, Chile (FIT USS). Results are summarized in terms of an innovation ecosystem that includes students and teachers and that has been successful in terms of changing teachers' practices, state of mind and self-confidence, as well as increasing students' learning results.