Integrating AI Education in Disciplinary Engineering Fields: Towards a System and Change Perspective

Building up competencies in working with data and tools of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more relevant across disciplinary engineering fields. While the adoption of tools for teaching and learning, such as ChatGPT, is garnering significant attention, integration of AI knowledge, competencies, and skills within engineering education is lacking. Building upon existing curriculum change research, this practice paper introduces a systems perspective on integrating AI education within engineering through the lens of a change model. In particular, it identifies core aspects that shape AI adoption on a program level as well as internal and external influences using existing literature and a practical case study. Overall, the paper provides an analysis frame to enhance the understanding of change initiatives and builds the basis for generalizing insights from different initiatives in the adoption of AI in engineering education.