Global Competencies in Industrial Engineering Education: Curricular Relevance and Pedagogical Practices From the Perspective of Educational Actors

Abstract

Global competence has become a central criterion of quality in engineering education, yet little is known about how it is understood and enacted in programs located in peripheral, non-elite institutions where structural internationalization is limited. This study examines how academic staff and students of an industrial engineering program at a Colombian public university located on the Venezuelan border interpret global competencies, assess the relevance of their curriculum, and describe the pedagogical practices through which such competencies are, or fail to be, developed. A qualitative, hermeneutic-phenomenological design was adopted. Eight key informants (four faculty members, including two with program-direction experience, and four students, two of whom had completed international academic mobility) participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed following the categorization, contrastation, structuring, and theorization sequence, yielding three categories and six subcategories. Findings show a shared but unequally elaborated conception of global competence in which adaptability, intercultural interaction, critical thinking, and second-language proficiency are recurrent; a curriculum that is internationally compatible in structure yet declarative in intent, since global competence is neither named nor assessed in micro-curricular documents and English operates as a graduation requirement rather than a formative pathway; and a repertoire of pedagogical practices — state-of-the-art review, case analysis, mirror classes, classroom projects with local firms, and industrial visits — that produces global competence as a by-product of research training rather than as a planned learning outcome. Access to mobility is concentrated in a minority of students, making the enacted curriculum the principal equity lever. The study contributes an empirically grounded account of internationalization at home under resource constraints and proposes implications for curricular design, faculty development, and assessment in engineering programs of the Global South.