Abstract:

The Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) goal is to assure that products and services are produced or delivered with the right quality, in the right time and with the right cost [1]. As such, IEM is a field of engineering highly relevant for today’s world sustainability challenges, namely those condensed in the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with professionals specially trained to solve economic and societal problems by eliminating all sources of processes and products’ waste while striving for continuous improvement.

However, students entering IEM undergraduate programmes across Europe experience difficulties in fully understand what IEM is, the fundamental areas it encompasses, and the roles graduates will perform in their future professional lives. Furthermore, IEM being an engineering program presents a curriculum heavy on courses from the basic and engineering sciences (e.g. mathematics and physics, but also informatics, materials and mechanical engineering) leaving aside, at least in the first year the fundamental areas of IEM, such as operations management, logistics, purchasing, supply chain management, quality management, information management, energy management and decision support systems (including statistics and operational research). This situation makes it relevant for IEM undergraduate students to have in the first semester of their first year an introductory course to IEM, opening-up some ideas for future roles after graduation and increasing their motivation levels to become IEM professionals able to contribute to a sustainable future.
The aim of this work is to share the authors’ experience throughout the development and implementation of such an introductory course where more innovative teaching and learning methodologies were used.

The main ones were:
(i) challenge-based learning (CBL) used as a methodology for the group assignments the students were asked to do;
(ii) flipped learning used for specific topics that students had to present to the class
(iii) games, which were used throughout the course to illustrate IEM concepts related to the fundamental areas of IEM.

One of the goals of the course was also that students acknowledge the UN SDG, and be capable of demonstrating how the IEM thematic areas can contribute to their achievement. As such in one of the CBL based assignments, that were part of the evaluation, students had to address the SDG.

The use of assignments as part of the evaluation, as well as the use of games and flipped learning, also contributed to the development of students’ soft skills such as oral and written communication, teamwork and critical thinking.

By combining expositive and ‘hands-on’ classes, and emphasising students’ group work under a CBL approach, the first steps to offer students a sound, dynamic, interactive and broad introduction to IEM were taken. It was possible to design a course both appealing and relevant to help students get in touch with IEM since they enter the undergraduate programme.

References:
[1] Zandin, K. (Ed.) (2001). Maynard’s Industrial Engineering Handbook, 5th ed., McGraw-Hill Education.

Keywords:

Industrial Engineering and Management, Challenge Based Learning, Flipped Learning, Games, Sustainable Development Goals, Soft Skills.