A reflection after keynoting PAEE/ALE 2026 at Taisho University, Tokyo — on why KMUTT’s shift to active learning was a patient thirteen-year evolution, not a reaction to disruption.
It was an honour to keynote at Taisho University in Tokyo on 6 June 2026, looking out at what felt like a small gathering of World Cup representatives — colleagues from Japan, Brazil, Portugal, the Netherlands, Colombia, Mexico, Korea and more — at the PAEE/ALE 2026 conference. My talk was titled “Engineering Education with Purpose,” and what I really wanted to do was tell a KMUTT story that I think matters well beyond Thailand.
The story is about patient evolution. From the outside, KMUTT’s shift toward active learning, AI, and social innovation can look like a quick reaction to global disruption. It wasn’t. It is a thirteen-year plan we began mapping in 2017 and are still walking toward 2030. We no longer treat active learning as a special event; it is woven into how we teach, with around 20% of our engineering courses now running this way. We set up the Centre for Active Learning in Engineering Education (CALEE) in 2018 to keep the practice honest — peer observation across departments, shared rules, real funding. The number I keep coming back to is a small one: student innovation outputs grew from 17 in 2016 to 55 last year. Slow, steady, real.
Education without social impact is incomplete engineering. Through our “Social Lab” approach we place researchers in communities, rather than visiting for a photo. One example I love is the Bang Mod electric boat: with the Embassy of the Netherlands, we gave retired diesel canal boats a second life using recycled EV batteries — quiet, zero-emission vessels now serving a real Bangkok neighbourhood. Our engineering student volunteer project is in its 19th year, which makes it one of the most durable service-learning programmes we run. It has, in effect, become a culture.
Now we are stepping into what we call “Era 3” — advanced technology and AI-augmented engineering. First-year students are grounded with an AI module that assesses the skills that will define a future-ready engineer: validation, verification, ethics, and security. Our INNO-X maker space logged over 2,000 tool sessions in six months — half of that use from first-years who can’t wait to get their hands dirty.
Reflecting on preparing and delivering this keynote, one thing is clear. KMUTT has been genuinely innovative in training engineers through active learning, and has advocated for it strongly. What it has done less of is look back at itself — to pause, reflect, and document the work so the DNA stays alive. That, perhaps, is the next task.
With thanks to Dr. Inoue of Taisho University, General Chair of PAEE/ALE 2026, for the kind invitation; and to the hugely supportive team from CALEE and the Faculty of Engineering — Dr. Surawut, Khun Chotthanin, and Khun Yutthakan — for the comprehensive data.