On-Line Teaching as a Tool for Global Engineering Education: From the Experiences of the Global Education Center for Engineers, South Korea

Since its origin, on-line education has been regarded within the higher education community as second rate. In recent years, however, there has been some renewed attention to its utility, especially with MIT’s efforts in making its educational content freely available on-line. Based on the experiences of South Korea’s Global Education Center for Engineers (GECE), this presentation will argue that on-line education has a large potential to be an effective tool in the training of “global” engineers. Since 2008, the GECE has offered on-line courses within our network of South Korean universities, with a focus on liberal education (e.g., engineering communications, engineering ethics and leadership, technology and entrepreneurship) and capstone design. While the bulk of GECE’s network is domestic, we have wrought some ties with Pennsylvania State University, Oxford University, and Smith College. We envision that the expansion of the network to additional universities outside of Korea may be beneficial not only to us, but also to our counterparts, as students gain the opportunity to work with peers from different socio-cultural backgrounds. This presentation will include a short history of the GECE, samples of the center’s recent educational activities, and future outlook, especially regarding the potential of on-line teaching as a tool for training globalized engineers. .