How to embed ‘the reflective engineer’ in higher engineering education

In 2019, the authors came up with a vision of the future university for engineers. It describes a future situation and behaviour of ‘reflective engineers” who interact and behave in a particular way while engaging with technology. The vision is created with a Vision in Product Design (VIP) methodology from Hekkert & van Dijk. This vision of the future university starts with the idea that every one of us has personal ambitions, talents and interests that drives our interests and ways of working for the good of society at large. Nevertheless, at the start of our career, we may not be aware of these ambitions, talents and interests, and one needs to explore and reflect on a variety of challenges to discover: (1) In what way we would like to engage with technology (2) How would we like to work together in the technological domain (3) Whether we prefer to engage in slow/fast production cycles A reflective portfolio including engineering roles as a vehicle to become a deliberate professional will be embedded in the interdisciplinary master curriculum of biomedical engineering at the 3ME department at TU Delft. In this conceptual paper, we will expand on the design implementation process of the reflective engineer in challenge-based education following the vision of the future university.