September 21, 2023

The "Critical Engineering Thinking" course is being developed at the St. Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation

One of the main tasks of an engineer is to drive scientific and technological progress, to create something fundamentally new.

At the same time, most of the solutions already seem to have been invented. The issue of critical comprehension of the entire array of information that a specialist receives comes to the fore today. This requires a number of techniques, which formed the basis of the course on critical engineering thinking.

– The course is unique for a number of reasons. Its theoretical part will be common to all technical educational programs of SUAI. Here students will be able to learn to correctly comprehend the arrays of data they receive. Often the solution of an engineering problem involves a whole complex of people. Therefore, an engineer should be able to formulate a task not only for himself, but also for others, should be able to argue. Critical engineering thinking is not only an analysis, it is also a synthesis of information in order to understand it for yourself and convey it to others. This is the basis of the course," explains one of the developers of the educational course Alexey Kozulyaev, head of SUAI Laboratory of Cognitive Research.

The practical part of the new course is based on gamification. The Engineering Garage of the SUAI Engineering School implements a game format in solving engineering problems that are included in the practical part of the course. Training with the introduction of gaming techniques is a trend that sets the era of digitalization.