Work-In-Progress: Global Competency in Engineering Education - Are We Doing Well Enough?

Global competence represents one’s ability to work effectively across cultures. It is a crucial employability skill for graduate mobility in the international engineering market and working in a diverse workforce. This study investigated the presence of global competence in an electronic engineering program’s curriculum at Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM). Curriculum mapping was undertaken on the publicly accessible program handbooks and courses syllabus using a developed phrase bank of keywords indicative of global competence. Each course was then classified by the about matching to the keywords (strong, moderate, weak, no). A visual heat map was produced from the results to visually demonstrate the inclusion of global competence in courses. The findings demonstrated that 36%of the total courses in the electronic engineering program had strong or moderate evidence of global competency. This heatmap snapshot is a valuable reference for policymakers and curriculum developers to enable continual curriculum development works.