Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges in co-curricular and online environment: Opportunities and Challenges

Engineering Deans Canada (EDC) recently articulated Grand Challenges that recognize the role of engineers and the specific needs of Canadians in the form of Canadian Engineering Grand Challenges (CEGCs). The CEGCs offer a unique framework to motivate and engage engineering students from different disciplines and encourage collaboration and the sharing of their discipline expertise. The CEGCs also offer a framework for engineering students to develop leadership skills and gain awareness of their technological, innovation and stewardship roles. In this paper, we report on a student-led approach in the online environment for the creation of two workshops and one “Leadathon” case competition  related to the CEGCs and leadership skills development.  The activities were developed and delivered by a team of engineering students with the support of faculty members. We refer to this student-led model as “for-students-by-students’. Feedback collected from student facilitators and participants indicate that the resulting activities were effective in engaging students and raising awareness of the CEGCs and of their role to address societal problems as future engineers. We present the methodology that was adopted to leverage and take advantage of the online environment, while addressing differences in participant interactions and engagement from the perspective of opportunities and challenges.  Finally we discuss potential avenues to integrate into the mainstream curriculum for-student-by-student model related to the interaction with  CEGCs.