In the context of global crises such as climate change, social inequality, and dwindling resources, engineers have a central position in developing adequate and sustainable solutions in cooperative effort with multiple and diverse stakeholders alongside society. Engineers are no longer expected to acquire only technical expertise in developing technological solutions, but also a holistic awareness of social, ethical, and environmental dimensions, considering technology impact assessment and recognizing their social responsibility.

Consequently, engineering education is demanded to adapt learning settings, which enable students to address the challenges framed by the Sustainable Development Goals. Conventional engineering education programs have been challenged to adequately equip their students with the capabilities required to address complex, multi-dimensional problems in highly emergent contexts of action. This calls for a transformation of engineering education curricula, aimed at cultivating a future-oriented graduate profile that equips prospective engineers with the necessary skills to confront these challenges successfully. At TH Köln University of Applied Sciences, the implementation of a Challenge-Based learning approach represents a form of curricular innovation that provides self-directed learning scenarios where students engage to define and address a problem focusing on the process of creating sustainable solutions considering the needs and expectations of diverse societal stakeholders. Within this context, the “Engineers Without Borders Challenge” (EWB Challenge) offers an open and flexible learning environment for cultivating Future Skills and fostering a sense of social responsibility in engineering students.

This research aims to evaluate how participation in the EWB Challenge contributes to the development of Future Skills like sensemaking, design thinking competence, cooperation competence and reflection competence among students in the course Innovation Management in master’s program Mechanical Engineering - Smart Systems and Green Building Engineering. The study builds on a mixed methods approach, which quantitatively evaluated the students' self-assessed skills, expectations, and motivation within the Challenge through a pre-evaluation and a post evaluation survey. The quantitative data are further complemented by a qualitative analysis of the students' reflection reports, offering more detailed insights into their learning experience. The results are expected to map a tendency of the development of competences through participation in the challenge, identifying areas of significant improvement as well as potential gaps that may indicate the need for further adjustments to our implemented learning format.

Keywords: Responsible Engineering, Challenge-Based Learning, Future Skills.