‘Uniting our efforts in the service of a common ambition for the institution’

The INSA community is rallying round to implement this project affecting all education departments. Meeting with frontline players. 

New modes of organisation, production and economic models must be invented 

Alexis Méténier, Director of Corporate Relations 

‘The need to develop engineering education in relation to the ever-increasing impact of technology on society and the environment is a vision shared by all. Companies of all sizes see engineers as having a major role to play in transitions at work, whether energy, digital, social or economic. Science, which opened the doors to progress, will also have to help find the keys to these great challenges. Many business leaders and engineers are faced with the same questions about the future and share the belief that new modes of organisation, production and economic models must be invented. Given the scale of the task, no one has the solution and all players are affected. It makes sense for INSA to take up these challenges by developing its education without waiting for demand from the job market. It doesn’t just make sense - it’s imperative. The question is no longer which engineer can adapt to progress, but what progress will have to be invented by the engineer’.

Uniting our efforts in the service of a common ambition for the institution

Nicolas Freud, ‘Education development’ project manager

‘Now that the roadmap has been set, it's time to move on to implementation, and Christian Olagnon, Director of Education at INSA Lyon, has asked me to coordinate the project. Having first taken part in the discussions that led to the guidelines set by the Board of Directors (BoD), and being convinced of their importance, I did not hesitate much before accepting the role of project manager, with enthusiasm but also a little apprehension faced with the scale of the task.

The first concrete action is to set up a steering and coordination committee, as provided for in the second framework note voted for by the Board of Directors. The role of this committee will be to ensure the implementation of the project and its consistency throughout the school over the five years of the programme. To this end, it will have to work with all the departments and centres and support teaching staff to develop education models in line with the learning objectives. 

The challenge will be to bring on board a large number of colleagues, from all disciplines, and to unite our efforts in the service of a common ambition for the institution. We rarely have the opportunity to work in this way, and on this scale. The deadline of the 2021 academic year for the first and third years will be tight, but we must look to the longer term: these are developments that will be implemented gradually over several years. Even if everything is not perfect right away, what matters is the direction taken. It will probably be difficult, but I am convinced that the challenge is worth the effort’. 

We need to give more meaning to our education

Marc Romagné, a fourth-year engineering student in the Civil Engineering and Urban Planning Department, is an elected member of the Departmental Council, the Studies Council and his department's transition group

‘Students want to do science, but not disconnected from the life we live in, including the societal and environmental problems we collectively face. Addressing sustainable development and social responsibility (SD&SR) issues during our education does not mean much if we confine ourselves to raising awareness - we need courses with more systemic approaches, professors who lead us to look beyond their discipline. What is expected of an engineer today? Not the same as 60 years ago. We expect more responsibility, a better consideration of human beings, of discernment in the face of the issues. For example, it is very important to think about the digital world. It does not always have a positive impact - it can also lead to excessive consumption of resources if engineers do not take into account restraint. Furthermore, the societal consequences of digital technology, in terms of usage, must be the subject of more critical reflection. Digital technology has become an indispensable tool, but it is not an end in itself. It is very important to prepare for the changes that are going to happen, to be educated for this. And from this point of view, although everyone agrees that education needs to adapt, the hardest thing is resistance to change’. 

Gradually leading students to develop a systemic understanding of the issues 

Marion Fregonese, Professor of Chemistry and Thermodynamics in the Basic Engineering Education Department (FIMI)

‘Some existing courses already address SD&SR issues. Such experiences are valuable and will provide a basis for building a more ambitious education. The second framework note voted for by the Board of Directors thus provides for the creation of cross-disciplinary courses dedicated to SD&SR, which will be linked to SD&SR learning introduced into existing disciplines, in order to respond to the technical and societal issues raised by climate change, energy, raw material resources, damage to living organisms (ecosystems) and health, etc., while exploring the links between science, technology and society and the dynamics of change. One of the major challenges will be to lead students to gradually develop a systemic understanding of these issues, from the first year of their engineering curriculum, and this understanding must be built on a solid scientific basis. This will require a transdisciplinary approach, with lecturers from different disciplinary fields working together (in engineering sciences but also in humanities and social sciences). This is an important challenge because, to date, few spaces in the education models allow for it’.

Rethinking learning in scientific disciplines by exploring the potential of digital technology

Véronique Eglin, Professor of Computer Science and Deputy Director of the FIMI department

‘As far as digital technology is concerned, the aim is that all our students should be able to acquire the basics they need, even if they do not choose to specialise in this field. Four key themes have been identified: the basics of computing (architectures and systems, algorithms, programming languages, etc.); numerical computation, data science and artificial intelligence; and the digital society (infrastructures, tools, societal and environmental issues of the digital transition, etc.). These themes will be addressed in dedicated courses, but also by developing the use of numerical computation in all scientific disciplines. Although the project is far from starting from scratch, this last aspect will require the efforts of many teaching colleagues whose speciality is not digital. One of the keys will be collaboration between colleagues from different disciplines’.

Becoming a learning community

Laurence Dupont, head of the Teaching, Digital and Learning Technology Support Unit (ATENA)

‘A profound transformation that awaits the teaching staff and our role is to provide them with all the help we can to carry out these changes as best they can. It’s exciting but also demanding for lecturers: experts in their discipline, they will have to learn to work as part of a transdisciplinary approach and, for some of them, acquire new skills, particularly in the digital field. How can we train ourselves? How can we find time? How can we ensure consistency in our programmes and practices over the five years of education? The ATENA team, accompanied by the teaching representatives of each of the departments and centres but also by its partners (OpenINSA, engineering schools on the Lyon Saint-Etienne site), will be there to identify and meet the needs of staff. I am convinced that collaboration and the sharing of experiences are the keys to success. We need to reinvent our teaching practices, work together (teaching staff and students), agree to learn from others and pass on our own know-how. INSA Lyon will thus become a real learning community thanks to this education development project’.

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