1st International Conference on Competency-Based Engineering Education in the Face of Technological Transformation

Abstract

The document systematizes the ideas shared at the “1st International Conference on Competency-Based Engineering Education in the Face of Technological Transformation”, evaluating the urgency of reconfiguring higher education in the face of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI). It is determined that the traditional curricular model, fragmented into isolated subjects and focused on rote assessment, proves ineffective against the rapid obsolescence of technical knowledge. In response, Competency-Based Education (CBE) is postulated as a paradigm that understands competency as a demonstrated productive capacity for problem-solving in the workplace environment. This approach integrates five inseparable dimensions: knowing, knowing how to do, knowing how to be, wanting to do, and being able to do. Consequently, teaching practice evolves; the professor acts as a designer of experiences and applies longitudinal evaluations using rubrics. Furthermore, technological integration demands that the student's primary competency be “learning to learn”. GAI should be used as a conversational and analytical scaffolding to understand complex cyber-physical systems, without this implying the abandonment of fundamental basic sciences. Finally, the analysis warns about the risks of extractivism and the climate crisis, requiring a transversal ethical commitment to avoid “technological somnambulism”. As the speakers did not converse with each other, in this text their ideas are intersected to form a dialectical synthesis. To implement these changes, universities need to make their administrative structures more flexible, allowing certifications and intermediate exit qualifications that nimbly adapt their programs to labor market demands.