Teaching Strategies in Industrial Engineering Programs in Brazil: Benchmarking in North American Universities

Abstract

Engineering education in developed countries is seen as a benchmark for all others. Its teaching strategies, combined with assessing knowledge and the infrastructure of modern laboratories and classrooms, allow students to develop their skills and prepare themselves professionally for the job market. At the same time, engineering education is not valued in Brazil. Its teaching methodologies are traditional and directed towards a final concept. With this, essential skills for the job market are partially developed, such as teamwork, problemsolving, and critical thinking. Thus, as similar strategies to those that companies do, a benchmarking to understand how this process takes place. This benchmarking is essential for directing engineering education based on best practices already adopted by other universities. In this context, the present study investigates the possibility of inserting North American teaching strategies in Brazilian universities focusing on engineering. As methodological procedures, unstructured interviews were used in a focus group with six American universities. In these groups, professionals related to engineering education were invited: Professors, Members of teaching and learning centers, and administrative support and support technicians. In addition to the interviews, direct observations about the infrastructure and the procedures adopted in their teaching were conducted to analyze their complexity. As a result, we highlight the development of strategic partnerships with local industries in which alumni are the main means of engaging these partnerships, the development of unique competency management that involves the entire university, and the need for innovation in the education environment in engineering so that the university can be increasingly inserted in the context of open innovation with a focus on attracting new students, economic and geographic growth and local social impact with a focus on community development.