A Comparative Analysis of Worldwide Trends in the Use of Information and Communications Technology in Engineering Education

Abstract

This paper forecasts learning technologies that are predicted to impact the practice of engineering education according to the perceptions of engineering education researchers and practitioners. These forecasts were derived from three worldwide surveys carried out in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The responses were analyzed to know the technologies that will have an impact in the short, medium and long term. In turn, differences in forecasts according to area of specialization and geographical region were studied. Moreover, this paper applies social analysis (Google Trends) and bibliometric analysis (Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science) to these predictions in order to discover which technologies were successful and really impacted in engineering education, and which ones failed to have the predicted impact and why.

Keywords

• Engineering education
• higher education
• worldwide survey
• technology-enhanced learning
• technology meta-trends