What is integrated teaching–learning? What is integrated engineering? How is educational integration achieved?
Integrated engineering education is an interdisciplinary approach rooted in integrated learning, which shifts the focus from teaching subjects separately to connecting knowledge and skills across multiple fields to solve real-world, complex problems. Through practical and team-based projects, students learn how combining engineering with social sciences, humanities, and management can lead to innovative solutions in areas such as clean energy, smart cities, or biomedical engineering. The main goal is to prepare engineers with systems thinking, teamwork, creativity, and cross-disciplinary skills for innovation and entrepreneurship.
Despite its advantages, implementing this approach faces challenges such as a lack of interdisciplinary faculty, difficulties in designing and assessing integrated programs, heavy workload for students, resistance to traditional change, and limited resources. Solutions include training faculty for joint teaching, designing real-world projects in collaboration with industry, providing infrastructure for teamwork, and developing new assessment models to help overcome these barriers and align engineering education with the needs of the 21st century.
