Fostering Holistic Competencies, Global Citizenship, and Innovation in Engineering Students through Community Outreach to Disadvantaged User Groups

Abstract

The current work-in-progress paper reports an ongoing implementation of a capstone project course that aims to develop holistic competencies and global citizenship in engineering students through innovations and community outreach to disadvantaged user groups. This work is part of a larger on-going joint university project in Hong Kong. Six universities across a variety of disciplines have participated in the project; which targets to identify effective pedagogies and assessment methods for holistic competencies, and to collect the evidence of students’ holistic competencies development. The focus is placed on engineering students and their learning in the current ongoing study. The project objectives are implemented by integrating community outreach activities and capstone project experience to foster context-driven innovation in engineering students. The paper also reports two projects completed by the student participants, namely the development of a context-aware alternative and augmentative communication system for children with intellectual disability; and the implementation of a cloud communication system for people with complex communication needs. Our work is amongst the early attempts to understand and promote holistic competencies and global citizenship development in engineering students.