Engineers Canada’s Futures of Engineering Accreditation project (Strategic Priority 1.1: Investigate and validate the purpose and scope of accreditation) objective is to leverage the insights, perspectives, and expertise of the Canadian engineering community to examine the current accreditation system, understand how it is serving contemporary needs, and consider how it can chart a new path for the future of the engineering profession. Since the start of the year, the project team has completed a great deal of work to advance this project and our development of a purpose of accreditation and a national academic requirement for licensure.
Simulations kick-off
Throughout 2022, the project team spent time understanding the engineering ecosystem, the key players, and the future that engineers and the accreditation system will need to respond to. On March 30th , we officially launched the virtual simulations. These simulations will occur in four 2-hour sessions over the course of the next six weeks. Participants from across the engineering community will work in small groups and explore, through the lens of a persona of a future engineer, a specific purpose of accreditation and an academic requirement for licensure. Through this process we will generate insights on a variety of parameters to assess what works, what doesn’t, and why.
At this stage of the project, we are looking at what is desirable and starting to explore the feasibility of these options. The outputs generated will provide insights about the options, and lead to a streamlined list which will be further accessed for feasibility and viability with the project task forces and the regulators.
Simulation co-design process
Considering the needs and constraints of stakeholders continues to be the value that underpins the work on this project. The project team took a co-design approach to develop the simulations, collaborating with stakeholders from academia and industry. Together, they reflected on what outputs were needed for the work going forward, tested the first version of the simulations, and refined potential concepts and inputs for the simulations based on the insights gathered thus far.
Their collaboration and feedback have helped ensure that the simulations are relevant and accessible to all participants, generating results that will drive us towards our intended outcomes.
We encourage you to visit the website to keep up to date on project updates, and research gathered from the engineering community on accreditation and the future of engineering.
