How engineers will learn across departmental boundaries in the future
The engineering departments are planning to work more closely together in teaching. In the interview, Jan Vermant, Vice Rector for Curriculum Development, and Judith Zimmermann, Head of the Unit for Teaching and Learning (UTL), explain what this collaboration could look like.
The four engineering departments D-BAUG, D-ITET, D-MATL, and D-MAVT are planning to work more closely together in teaching. The goal is for students to gain more interdisciplinary experience and learn more often with colleagues from other departments.
The idea originated with students from VSETH: in 2019, as part of the Open ETH initiative (then ETH+), they proposed developing a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary Engineering Sciences together with a number of professors.
The joint degree programme became an initiative to create more interdisciplinary teaching in the departments by August 2027. The Executive Board approved the reorientation of the project in July.
Jan Vermant, why is there no interdisciplinary engineering degree programme?
Vermant: Many people thought the idea was great at first, but when we discussed the curricula, the departments' ideas were too different. The catch was that such a degree programme could not be too close or too far from the existing curricula.
What does the VSETH say about this?
Vermant: It was always involved in the discussions and agrees with the reorientation. Students want new ideas and solid joint initiatives in addition to the existing basic training, as envisaged in the interdisciplinary bachelor's program.
What is the idea behind the initiative?
Vermant: While working on the degree programme, it became clear that there is a broad common basis and considerable overlap in content in the typical basic courses in Engineering Sciences – an estimated sixty percent. That's where we want to start: the lecturers of these subjects should be able to work more closely together – without losing sight of the respective references to the disciplines.
Judith Zimmermann, how do you intend to implement this in concrete terms?
Zimmermann: We are striving to ensure that proven teaching and learning methods and materials can be used across departments. These can be parts of lecture notes, but above all digital teaching and learning applications, which are currently often developed on the initiative of individual lecturers. Examples include the digital exercise collection Stack from mathematics and various good AI tutors. We see a lot of potential here. The programming platform CodeExpert, which ETH students from various departments use to learn programming, shows that this approach works.
How does the Rectorate support the departments?
Zimmermann: First and foremost, we support lecturers in making their teaching and learning methods and applications available to others. The departments can receive additional human resources to work on this. With Samira El Boudamoussi, we also have a new specialist in the UTL (Unit for Teaching and Learning) department. She supports the departments and lecturers in identifying common content in the curricula, defining common learning objectives, harmonizing nomenclatures, and coordinating examination types and assessment grids.
And how does that lead to more interdisciplinary teaching?
Vermant: Indirectly. First, it leads to more collaboration between lecturers. I am convinced that in this way – bottom-up – we are paving the way for more joint teaching.
Zimmermann: We would also like to create even better conditions for project-based teaching. This is because many projects bring together students from different subjects, in line with the original idea. For example, we are looking at how we can open up proven teaching projects to students from other departments. Or what support would be useful to encourage even more lecturers to offer project-based teaching, right through to prototype construction. Another possibility is to provide administrative support to student competition teams such as the Academic Motorsport Association (AMZ) or the Academic Space Initiative Switzerland (Aris) so that more students can participate.
More resources for stable AI applications in teaching
In July, the Executive Board also approved the development of a stable AI platform for teaching. The decision will enable additional specialists (developers and data scientists) to be hired at the ID and in the Rectorate, and the necessary server resources to be provided. The aim is to bring proven AI applications, such as the course-specific ETHEL chatbots, out of the experimental phase and into stable, regular operation.
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