17 year evolution of the students’ perspective on innovative teaching, curricular development and e- learning in Europe Andreea Militaru, Cristian García, George Kladis, Marta Cortesão and Monika Tolgo Board of European Students of Technology (BEST) Brussels, Belgium marta.cortesao@best.eu.org Abstract— After the year 2000, the world changed rapidly with the prevalence of internet, and globalization. This has changed the criteria and the expectations that companies have from their employees. Countries across Europe are undergoing curricula reforms towards more competence based approaches, emphasizing the importance of creativity, innovation and a learner-centered education. But how has European Engineering Education (EEE) developed in the last two decades? Board of European Students of Technology (BEST) has been, since 1998, gathering and transmitting technology students’ opinions on educational matters to interested entities. To provide insights on the general EEE development through the last two decades, BEST presents now a 17-year evolution of the students’ opinions on three main educational topics: innovative teaching, curricular development and e-learning. Gathered opinions indicate that the EEE has adapted to socio-technological influences towards constant curriculum development. The internet together with other technology advances lead to new ways of learning, such as e- learning and virtual mobility, which in turn lead to an enhanced communication and sharing, emphasizing the social skills of an engineer. Nevertheless, there is still room for improvement. There is still the need to step forward, out of the entrepreneur hubs of innovation, to a global academia scale. The development of EEE will surely be as successful as the company-university-student common and proactive involvement. Companies need to be involved in study programs and help bridging the gap between the knowledge gained in university years and the skills needed in the corporate world. And the modern student should be open-minded, innovative, and communicative in order to be able to contribute to the global market. Keywords— BEST, technology, e-learning, curriculum development, innovative teaching methods I. INTRODUCTION After the year 2000, the world changed rapidly with the prevalence of internet, and globalization has changed the criteria and the expectations that companies have from their employees. According to the Final Report on the Study on Creativity and Innovation in Education in the EU Member States by the European Commission, currently, countries throughout Europe are undergoing curricula reforms towards more competence based approaches, emphasizing the importance of creativity, innovation and a learner-centered education [1]. Why is that so? The teaching and learning methods are a complex human experiences, thus educational bodies have tried to make it exciting and enjoyable, as well as useful later in the corporate world [2]. Research in educational field showed that in the last 2 decades these methods have evolved and technology was part of that. Prof. Dr. Murat Sönmez states that technology has been rapidly changing and becoming more complex, affecting engineering systems and the expectations and demands of job market. Engineers need to get interdisciplinary training to be able to adapt to the technological innovations and to succeed in a globally competitive business world via restructured engineering education system [3]. Nowadays, many organizations operate internationally, striving to motivate education professionals to arrange work placements and introducing students to international working environments. Different projects such as EU-VIP and PROVIP thematic networks are boosting interactions between higher education institutions, students and companies using the advantages of the newest technologies into e-learning. It is currently defined as the effective use of technological tools to enhance effectiveness of education [4-6]. The innovative teaching and learning methodologies have one goal - to constantly adapt the curriculum to the job market. The ability to provide the students’ with an adapted curriculum should result from overlapping the different expectations of future employers, academia and students themselves, finally bridging the gap between classroom teaching and engineering profession [7-8]. All this leads to one question: how has European Engineering Education (EEE) developed in the last two decades? Board of European Students of Technology (BEST) is a non- political, non-governmental and non-profit students association, counting with around 3000 members and reaching with its activities more than 1.3 million technology students of 96 Universities, each one represented by a Local BEST Group (LBG), through 33 European countries [9]. One of the main goals of BEST is to increase technology students’ awareness of educational matters, in order to help students with their self- development and to transmit input on educational matters to European higher education stakeholders by collecting individual opinions from students, the academic world and companies. 978-1-4799-8706-1/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE 20-24 September 2015, Florence, Italy Proceedings of 2015 International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL)