Engineering Education: Exploring Group Projects to Teach Innovative Automotive Topics

Education in STEM is usually focused on vast theoretical background and the development of strong mathematical skills, however with the deep progress in data availability and the digital revolution, also the education field should adapt to meet new challenges and goals. Some of the desired outcomes of a modern engineering education system is the preparation of the students to a dynamic workplace, in which they will face unknown and uncertain challenges, and to achieve such preparation it is essential to learn how to approach a problem related to innovation, how to identify the key issues of the argument and how to organize and present insights on the topic. This paper proposes an analysis of a teaching methodology tested between 2019 and 2021, in which the students of the Automotive Engineering course developed group projects on innovation-related topics of the sector. The structure of the course and projects is presented as well as the main results achieved during the period.