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Transformative curriculum innovation is needed in engineering education programmes, to continuously keep up to date with developments in the professional and research disciplines, in society, technology and pedagogy, and in the characteristics and needs of its diverse students. To enable and facilitate such innovations, both the curriculum's design and its institutional organisation need to be easily adaptable. This paper introduces Curriculum Agility, a concept that has been developed between 2018 and 2023 in a series of focus group sessions with engineering education practitioners and experts. Throughout these co-creational and iterative sessions, Curriculum Agility was defined as a responsively organised education, with dynamic learning contents and flexible pedagogics and didactics, while all involved staff is continuously developing competency to deal with the necessary transitions. Ten principles of Curriculum Agility are presented to guide curriculum innovators at programme and course level towards continuous transformation that is desirable, feasible, and viable within their context.

Within six institutions, Chalmer’s University of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Eindhoven University of Technology, NTNU, Queen’s University Belfast, and Umeå University, activities of self-mapping Curriculum Agility have taken place, facilitated by the co-creators of this work. In this paper, they reflect on enablers of Curriculum Agility that they identified during the self-mapping process at their respective institutions. By putting a spotlight on enablers, ways to overcome obstacles are exemplified, when the ambition is to proactively futureproof an engineering curriculum. These enablers help in four curriculum innovation areas, which each have their own challenges: (1) Continuously adjusting learning content in courses, creating a need for a teaching and learning system with more dynamic learning goals and on-the-go, reciprocal expertise development. (2) Implementing or refining flexible education pedagogy and didactics to tailor to and being inclusive of the diverse student populations entering university. (3) Working with a responsive organisation and a continuously-change-facilitating management, where engagement and ownership of educational innovation is shared, and innovation space is constructively created where desired and needed. (4) Continuously developing all academic staff involved in engineering education innovation, for informed decision-making and shared understanding of the pedagogic and (inter- and trans-) disciplinary innovations needed to keep the engineering programme relevant and of high quality. This paper highlights positive examples of Curriculum Agility, and how its characteristics and principles can be implemented in a variety of university contexts with different organisational structures.

This multiple-case, participatory action research studied design thinking methods for co-creative curriculum innovation in higher education. The results intend to assist in designing curricula that meet future students’ learning needs and offer them a pedagogically bespoke and integrated learning process. Five co-creative degree program innovation processes in design and engineering education were observed at different European universities. The co-creators in each case consisted of educators (teachers and management), current students, industry and non-profit organizations, and academic developers and consultants. Each case aimed to actively include the future students’ perspective by having the co-creators create personas and user journey mapping scenarios throughout the design process. These human centered co-design methods originate in generic design thinking methodology but were fine-tuned from a learning experience design perspective. They zoomed in on the learning that happens in and because of the program curriculum design. Backed by learning theories, studying the five program curriculum innovation cases showed how future learning experiences can be considered by articulating learner student persona details on background, personality, learning behavior, motivations and needs, and plans after the program. Diverse learner journey mapping with these personas led to a wide array of flexible design ideas, ranging from program progression ideas and course specifics to didactic choices in the future classroom. The obtained empathic insights led the curriculum (re)designs beyond discipline-oriented perspectives to student-centered pedagogic innovation.

Future-proof engineering curricula can cope with fast-changing circumstances, and the opportunities and threats these bring along in the context of the curriculum. Curriculum Agility (CA) is a concept aimed at helping higher education institutions analyse how responsive their programmes are to changes in society, industry, and student characteristics and needs. The CA model describes features needed to adapt curricular and organizational structures, learning content and outcomes, learning activities and pedagogies, staff development, and examination design in a timely and proactive manner. Based on the model, a CA Self-Mapping Protocol has been developed that aims to actively engage and simultaneously enable curriculum stakeholders in the self-mapping process. It was tested at five European universities and at different levels, i.e. university, department, and program level. Leading questions focused on the effects of the CA self-mapping process; and what that could mean for the set-up of the protocol. The aim of this paper is to present to what extent, and in which form, the self-mapping protocol, as a design-thinking, guided dialogue with multiple stakeholders, is valuable and feasible in different higher engineering education institutional contexts. All facilitators were able to adjust the protocol to local contexts. And although there were all kinds of differences (of use and process) between the institutes, what ‘stands firmly’ is the importance of the negotiating understanding of what CA is and what it means to the local context. The presence of the ten principles were instrumental to ‘guarantee’ that people were discussing and considering the themes that needed to be addressed.

The concept of Curriculum Agility has been co-created in a series of sessions at CDIO meetings and conferences since 2018. Deliverables were a jointly generated definition, characteristics, a set of principles, and a self-mapping process on these principles. Using the Curriculum Agility concept offers guidance for CDIO programs and institutions in increasing the adaptability of their curricula based on the latest insights and developments in their discipline, continuously fulfilling the need of an ever more diverse student population and anticipating sudden societal changes. Curriculum Agility takes a holistic approach to considering conditions for proactive and timely curriculum development, including but not limited to enhancement of faculty competence. Although the success of CDIO implementation depends on this wider set of conditions that can drive, enable, or hinder change, this is currently not addressed in the CDIO standards. This paper proposes Curriculum Agility as an optional standard in the CDIO framework. It is a widely applicable, program-level concept including both educational and organisational aspects that addresses an important need in engineering education, and it is co-created within the CDIO community. Curriculum Agility is currently not sufficiently present or addressed in the existing standards. Therefore, this paper argues that Curriculum Agility as an optional standard and rubric will be a new useful tool in the CDIO toolbox.

This short paper describes the first prototyping of a self-evaluation process of Curriculum Agility at a Faculty of Technology in Sweden. The process comprises guided, semi-structured, individual interviews at different organisational levels within the faculty, a joint narrative based on those interviews, prioritizing development strategies per level, and jointly mapping them on importance and implementation time. The self-evaluation is part of and based on the research on the principles of Curriculum Agility. The results show the interplay in timely curriculum change for futureproof engineering education between the teaching staff, the systems and the people who control the systems. The self-evaluation brings together the different perspectives and perceptions within the faculty and gives insight in how those affect the willingness towards and occurrence of curriculum development. This work in progress indicates how doing such a qualitative self-evaluation paves the road for transparent strategic dialogues on a holistic level about what to give attention and organize differently.

This special session, within the conference theme of Incorporating Convergence into Programs, Curricula, and Continuing Education, focuses on Curriculum Agility in engineering education. It will introduce the concept of Curriculum Agility and its current trends, as well as further co-develop the concept behind it. This is done following an iterative design thinking approach, by co-creating guiding principles that engineering institutions can use to make their study programs more responsive, dynamic, and flexible. Curriculum Agility is particularly important in engineering education in order to keep pace with the rapid development of new technologies and materials. In addition, the concept aims to meet students' expectations and needs for more individualized study plans, as well as society's need for forward-thinking engineers equipped to contribute to finding solutions to current and future societal challenges. Thus, to anticipate and meet these challenges, institutions for engineering education need to have an organizational and management structure with the capacity to act within a much shorter timeframe than traditionally seen in universities. Curriculum Agility is a framework for introducing necessary changes in operations to be able to act responsibly and rapidly on change and expectations. This work presents seven principles for Curriculum Agility that have emerged from a series of sessions at international conferences and network meetings. The seven principles currently include: Stakeholder Involvement, Organization and Governance, Decision Making, Program and Course Design, Innovation of Education, and Pedagogy and Didactics. This special session brings educators together to discuss the 'what, how and why' with regard to Curriculum Agility. The overall aim is to further develop a shared vision on Curriculum Agility and build upon the intention of assessing it at different levels in the organization of engineering education institutions. The expected outcome of the special session is a collection of refined, redefined, and perhaps even newly defined principles for Curriculum Agility.