SEFI Jahreskonferenz zur Ingenieursausbildung in Europa - Lausanne - 02. bis 05. September 2024

The annual conferences of SEFI – the European Society for Engineering Education – are the most important specialist conferences on this topic in Europe. In 2023, the conference was held under the title Engineering Education for Sustainability at TU Dublin from September 11 to 14 and provided a broad forum for exchange on issues of sustainable technology design, ethical responsibility, and innovative teaching formats. Two lecturers from the Blue Engineering team at TU Berlin were on site to present the SCREW LOOSE, SHORT FUSE toolbox through the paper Screw Loose Toolbox.

The Paper Screw Loose Toolbox presented at the conference describes the 24 metaphorical tools of Blue Engineering. These function like special lenses to identify and question patterns of action, discussion logic, and collective decision-making processes. In this way, they reveal deficits in the familiar environment and open up scope for alternative ways of negotiation – with the normative goal of strengthening democratic processes and balancing interests. The presentation provided an overview of the competencies addressed, the definition of transfer of learning in the research framework, the development of the tools, and their application in teaching and beyond. Initial results show that the SCREW LOOSE, SHORT FUSE toolbox is being used productively to promote discussion and reflection among students—even though there are no standardized measurement methods or quantitative results available yet.