Analysis onto Competence-oriented Engineering Education System: A Perspective into the Differences between Chinese and German Engineering Education

Xin Zhang, Ying Zhang＊, Hua Li

Abstract: Through engineering education, a set of didactical programs and activities are planned to bring the essential knowledge, expertise and training to the students from the corresponding discipline and make them gain the competence of coping with various professional problems independently. Although holding the same views on the importance of developing competence,China and Germany construct the respective education systems in consideration of the different circumstances. In this paper, we propose the analysis onto the engineering education systems in the two countries and characterize the systems as competence-oriented. Through reflecting the differences, we mainly propose three suggestions as the theoretical contribution for deriving advantages from the German engineering education system.

Key words: competence-oriented; principles of training students; education system comparison

1 Introduction

Since long time ago, “made in Germany” has been well known all over the world and trusted as a “better quality” of industrial products. It is the effort made to continuously improving the industrial system that brings the progressive and significant industry development in recent decades. The continuous improvement further more originated from the highly valued engineering education and the close coordination between academia and industries. In other words, the success in engineering education enhance the German competitiveness.

In this paper, we mainly focus on identifying the key factors of building up the student competence during the engineering education and elaborate the characteristics of the competence evolution. We then analyze the philosophy of constructing the competenceoriented engineering education system from multiple dimensions and figure out the framework, targets and methods of establishing as well as driving the education system. Meanwhile, with considering the dimensions and their interrelations, we are enabled to reflect the rationale in which the competence could be developed by designing and adopting the advanced education system. With comparing the Chinese and German engineering education systems, we suggest the causes of forming the differences between Chinese and German engineering education systems and propose a set of practices learned from German engineering education system.

2 The Concept of Competence-oriented Engineering Education

Based on analyzing the current German education system, we find one critical feature of the system is highly focusing on developing the competence of students through, especially, training them to construct the knowledge base and master the capability of utilizing knowledge. In other words, the acquisition and mastery of the corresponding basic knowledge is the prerequisite for students to continue with the further professional study. On this basis, the internship training process built across academia and industry enables students to form a higher degree of adaptability in professional fields to flexibly engage in a variety of related positions according to actual needs under the lean production organization mode. Through the study and internship process, a reasonable match between individual ability growth and the social human resource requirement could be achieved. At the same time, the individual subjective initiative could be fully played,and the personal development could be coordinated in accordance with the social roles.

We identify three basic principles of training students in German engineering education system.First, loose enrolment and strict graduation. In the didactical process, the teaching activities provide students with relatively loose access to learn courses to ensure that most students have the opportunity to acquire knowledge in their desired academic fields.After the students choose their major, the students should strengthen their learned content to master the necessary primary and professional knowledge through passing the iterative conclusions and continuous assessment. Second, pursuing gradual lean education.Through the training, the primary learned knowledge could transform into the professional skills and the fundamental understanding could evolve into the sound capability, i.e., the gradual development of lean education. Third, the people-centered philosophy of design education system. Given that the various disciplines have different prerequisites onto their students and the students have their development intentions, the education system provides students with the opportunities of switching disciplines, especially the vocational education program and the academic education program are open to students in parallel.The connection channels between the two programs allow students to change their majors. The engineering education program constructed relying on the above principles highlights the importance of developing and improving competence. In other words, the didactical process established by the education program is aiming at making students enhance their capacity of executing the specific tasks to the capability of recognizing and analyzing problems. Through the further continuous professional training, the students could gain the ability to solve common problems.

3 Establishment of Education System and Teaching Philosophy

Germany’s education system and rules are constituted and implemented by the federal states. Therefore, this paper only focuses on the education system in Saxony and selects it as an analytical material to investigate the current didactical system design from four dimensions.

3.1 Learning progress

The teaching program plans the core tasks and learning objectives of students during the corresponding learning stages and uses them as references for setting up teaching activities. Under the principle of gradual lean training, students are encouraged to grow with the teaching process.

According to the structure regulation of German degree structure, we model the learning progress with four main stages(in Fig.1),① fundamental knowledge preparation stage: Through teaching students with the courses, they could obtain the necessary basic knowledge required in the corresponding field,which could help them initially form the necessary conceptual basis to receive the follow-up professional content. During this stage, the scope of knowledge is slightly more critical than the depth. Since the teachers would provide some necessary learning guidance, the students are relatively controlled by corresponding teaching actions. As an entrance to higher education,this stage mainly undertakes the role of selecting and disseminating general knowledge.② domain expertise expansion stage: The scope of knowledge provided to students during the teaching activities gradually contracted and the expertise of knowledge gradually turns prominent.The requirements for the domain expertise increase correspondingly while the guidance from teachers is gradually decreasing. Accordingly,the personal learning responsibility and execution of students becomes the core factor of pushing the students to the further learning progress. Along the above process of learning from basic knowledge to professional knowledge, the filtering effect brought by gradual lean philosophy begins to appear. After introducing the assessments, the student learning performance would be evaluated. The ones who are lack of the adaptability or the self-control ability will move out of the current study.③ professional skill integration and upgrade stage: Since the students remaining after the previous two stages have possessed the acceptable cognitive and self-learning abilities, the promotion of teaching has been transformed from the previously mentioned teacher-guided pattern to the student self-recursive knowledge building based on the fundamental knowledge and professional expertise.Some other training means, such as open discussion,site inspection and so on would be introduced into the didactical process. More and more training activities are planned to improve the practical performance of students and drive them to grasp the expertise and skills by themselves, i.e., forming the self-improving ability.The students are encouraged to divergent thinking on the issue, to dialectically and open-mind provide problem-solving solutions.④ Practical capacity formation stage: Internship training has become an important measure to motivate students to enhance their abilities comprehensively. Students can understand and master the application and execution of professional skills in practical scenarios by experiencing related professional practice, advocating a reasonable balance between the personal development and the knowledge education and industrial practice.

Fig.1 Procedures along learning process.

3.2 Teaching scene

Teaching plan should take full account of the potential scenes and conditions of carrying out teaching activities. Based on the thorough consideration into the professional direction, training content and teaching object, a variety of teaching resources and technical means could be employed to pilot the students into multiple teaching scenarios, which could help to improve their enthusiasm and initiative in teaching activities as well as to improve teaching quality and knowledge transmission efficiency.

3.3 Tools and measures

Teaching programs, in the didactical process,employs various tools and measures to reduce/avoid misunderstanding of didactical content and to improve the efficiency of teaching activities. As implementing the interactions between teachers and students, we categorize the tools and measures into mono-direction media and mutual-direction media. The former refers to the media which is only used by teachers to transfer the content to students, while the latter refers to the media used to carry the interaction between teachers and students mutually.

3.4 Examination and verif cation

The effectiveness of implementing teaching programs should be verified through the phased examinations to assess the growth of student ability. The assessment could be carried out in various forms, such as course report, quiz, presentation and so on. Examination and verification play the essential role in selecting talents and acting lean education.

3.5 Comparison between Chinese and German engineering education systems

Given the above investigation and conclusion onto German engineering education system, we then introduce the characteristics of the Chinese engineering education system.

China's current education system emphasizes the professionalism and purpose of teaching and training,emphasizes the demand orientation of professionals and talents, emphasizes the connection with employment hotspots at the disciplinary level, and uses the promotion method to make the educated students meet the specific professional profile. Therefore, the teaching philosophy prefers the mastery of core professional skills and the cultivation of knowledge depth, which could drive the graduates to improve his/her ability for the particular job continuously.

China and Germany have their respective characteristics regarding the education system and teaching philosophy. The core elements of education and teaching can be summed up as the systematic training of students’ professional roles under the concept of push-type education in China and the development of competence under the concept of lean education in Germany.

Figure 2 shows an illustrative comparison between the teaching philosophies in China and Germany. The geometric shapes on the left of student A and student B represent the various abilities that students need to acquire through education. Each figure in the right represents different job positions in the scene. Figure 2(a) depicts that German education system places more emphasis on developing students' competencies and breadth of knowledge so that students can adapt to a variety of work situations. Figure 2(b) depicts China's education system emphasizes the professionalism and purpose of teaching and training, attaches great importance to the demand orientation of professionals and talents, and emphasizes the connection between teaching and employment.

Fig. 2 Comparison between Chinese and German training targets.

Regarding teaching methods and measures, a variety of teaching methods and some teaching assistant tools have been sufficiently demonstrated in the teaching classes in Germany. In particular, under the conditions of teaching in small classes, various teaching facilities,assistant tools to enhance students' sense during the teaching process as well as improve teaching quality and listening efficiency is of great significance. When giving lessons in small classes in China, topic lectures,instant Q & A and courseware are more common. The classes emphasize one-to-one communication. From the perspective of teaching methods, the teaching methods in China’s classes focus on the amount of information and time utilization of the teaching content and strive to deliver as much teaching content to students as possible in a relatively short teaching duration. From the aspects of teaching measures, the teaching activities have a relatively low dependence on the conditions of infrastructure, and the teaching tools used are relatively single and fixed, which makes the teaching activities less dependent on the infrastructure and facilitates.

Under the German engineering education framework, students have plenty of opportunities to choose and participate in a wide range of professional teaching activities to understand and learn the specifics and fundamentals of a particular profession. On the one hand, this manner provides the most direct subjective experience for students to determine their employment intention, and on the other hand, it also provides adequate student resources for the selection of suitable talents in higher education. During the implementation of education and teaching activities, through continuous filtering and elimination, the students who are suitable for the corresponding professional characteristics will enter a higher level of professional knowledge learning and skills training, realizing the gradual leanness of professional knowledge and professional abilities.When the students enter the professional learning stage, the systematic cooperation between the German education sector and the industrial sector provides students with the opportunity to participate in industrial practice training, which significantly closes the gap between theoretical knowledge training and professional skills training, and effectively promotes self-improvement in personal development. Accordingly, the German educational system design concept can be illustrated with a pyramid structure.

In contrast, China's higher education adopts another thought of teaching process management and advocates a systemwide function of education strictly and progressively and social roles. As shown in Fig. 2(b), the education system presents inverted pyramid structure.

4 Ref ection and Discussion

The progress made in engineering education in Germany is closely linked with the social responsibility and lean concepts. It emphasizes the central role of engineering education in serving the social and economic development while the latter also drives the progress of engineering education. Through years of development and improvement, Germany has achieved a complete closed-loop economic and social development that stimulates progress in engineering education and engineering education to promote economic and social development.

However, we should also see that there are still some limitations in the current engineering education system in Germany. Although its systematic training shortens the transition of students to social functions after experiencing school education, overly long training process and over-reliance on society on students'professional skills have some lag in rapidly improving and promoting industrial economic development.

China is in a critical period of rapid economic and social development. Under the general trend of common development of the global economy,engineering education does not only provide the functions of personnel training and knowledge propagation, but also it has great significance for improving the level of higher education(in Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Learning and training procedures in Germany and China.

This paper proposes three suggestions for carrying out engineering education. First, the openness and flexibility of engineering education should be strengthened. The implementation of engineering education cannot be separated from the cooperation and coordination between education and industry.The former lays the foundation for students to acquire necessary problem-solving skills. The latter provides opportunities and platforms for knowledge content to transform professional skills and efficiently breaks the gap between the barriers between the academics and industries. It could improve the process quality and accelerate the growth of engineering education.Second, both providing guidance and leaving examinations should be integrated and act. In the process of engineering education, it is necessary to guide students, that is, to lead students to gradually develop independent and autonomous learning ability, and establish solid and reliable professional qualifications. The process of engineering education also needs to verify the students’ learning performance with examinations, that is, reasonably assigning students with tasks to make them possess independent learning capability and to improve the efficiency of teaching and training process. Third, we should pay attention to the behavioral characteristics, ability characteristics and cultural background characteristics of individual students in engineering education. Based on the analysis of students’ basic ability, personal interest, learning habits and other aspects, the education process should dynamically adjust teaching methods,be compatible with different students' ability.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, we investigate German engineering education system by comparing its characteristics with that of China and identify the key factors of constructing the student competence along the didactical process. We especially analyze the evolution of the competence built up through students’ learning process with integrating the other factors to reflect a competence-oriented framework of acting engineering education. Relying on that, we continue with analyzing the difference between Chinese and German engineering education systems to specify the respective advantages. Concerning the current development of engineering education in China, we propose a set of suggestions as for the contribution of improving the engineering education system in China.

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange (CSC) for the funded National Higher Education Pedagogics (LH) Project.

This work was jointly supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(No.2018ZD06, No.2018MS024), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.61305056),the Overseas Expertise Introduction Program for Disciplines Innovation in Universities (Project 111)(No. B13009), the Undergraduate higher education reform project supported by Jilin Provincial Education Department (2017-71),and the Undergraduate higher education reform project supported by Changchun University of Science and Technology.