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Proceedings of the IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON 2021)
IEEE EDUCON 2021 was planned as a hybrid conference with a profound on-site part in Vienna but based on the experience of other scientific events from 2020/21 we had been prepared to switch smoothly to an online event. 60% of the authors, who submitted a paper for the conference, planned from the beginning to participate online based on the travel restrictions between Europe and the other continents and the pandemic situation in their home countries. On the other side we learned in advance from the experience in different forms of scientific communication from other organizations and communities. The conference was dedicated to the motto“Women in engineering” and aimed to discuss different aspects of this topic. For this reason, all our keynote speaker discussed this topic under their vision and perspective, first time most of them women. Also, a round table and 14% of the contributions were dedicated directly to this topic. Another focus was digitization and engineering education – 13% of the contributions. But 23% of the contributions discussed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to the changes, challenges, and opportunities of this crisis to engineering education and society in general. From the discussions and presented papers it is almost clear, that all educational systems over the world facing similar problems and try to approach them joining learning, teaching, and technology. This gave the participants also the deep understanding, that with their efforts and problems they are not alone but can rely on the experience of their colleagues from other institutions, countries and even continents. We all learned deeper insights in the general problems of mankind. It is imperative that we teach our new engineers to think about these aspects to reinforce the hope for a better world after the crisis and to empower them to turn these ideas into real projects. We are very happy that we had you all here in Vienna, at least virtually and hope, that we can have this meeting in the next years also on-side. We worked hard to give all the participants the feeling to be very welcomed in our virtual rooms and to support them in most of their requests and pleas. We thank all participants, who spent some of their valuable time to chair conference sessions. We have learned that this is no longer a matter of course in times of virtual conferences. We would like to express our gratefulness to our student volunteers and to the IT-support for their great support. We hope that the outcomes of this conference will influence the role of women in technology. We live in a changing world. Conferences will continue to be an essential part of science and research; let us shape them for the post-pandemic era.
