E-competence in chemical engineering learning and teaching

As chemical engineering education moves into the new millennium, characterized by competitive global educational market the role of educators in the twenty first century is changing; primarily there is a need to provide modern didactic methods in curriculum delivery. Similarly instructions in chemical engineering programs need to evolve to reflect the industry realities. With much vigor we have heard of the many reports criticizing higher education nad publicizing the need to update and revitalize engineering curriculums to make it relevant in the 21st century. Criticism included, apathetic students, illiterate graduates, and incompetent teaching staff, this remains a thorny issue in higher education. Hence changing student's mind set from being a student to becoming graduate engineers requires global constructs. This paper contributes to chemical engineering elearning and teaching by investigating the challenges for chemical engineering academic staffs and the e-learning barriers to their development and competencies. This work calls for pedagogic re-engineering in learning and teaching process by providing faculty proficiencies in e-learning, since engineering teaching needs to move away from fragmented teaching styles and move into a systems approach to provide an open ended engineering experience. Finally, we recommend implementation strategy guidelines under three key areas as a possible way to address some of the issues. Chemical engineering academic staffs need to learn from history and not remain teaching last century's engineering curriculums. © 2010 IEEE.