Engineering education at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden started in the beginning of the 1970s. There was a local need for higher education within engineering relating to natural resources and the nearby industry. For almost 30 years, the university could remain local. Now the university is transforming all education and curricula in agreement with the European Bologna process, while entering the global market. The purpose of this paper was to catch the ongoing changes and the driving forces behind this transformation from the perspective of a former local university in the periphery. The global efforts could be seen through academic cooperation and alliances, industrial cooperation and internationalization, and the use of technology. Conclusions drawn from the study were that today's engineering education must prepare the student for life long learning and employability all over the globe at any moment.

Attracting students to engineering education in Sweden has become problematic in the last decade. Swedish industry needs engineers, but students are hesitating to apply to the educational programmes offered, or choose other study paths. The problem was identified early and dealt with by the Department of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden. Since the 1980s teachers at the department have been involved in large-scale recruitment work. They have visited upper secondary schools and told students how great it is to become a professional engineer. Professors, researchers, consultants and teachers have shown students at upper secondary schools what the profession offers. They have shown how to build bridges, railways, sewage treatment plants, and water treatment plants and how they can be built to achieve environmental sustainability. The upper secondary schools have been carefully selected all over Sweden. In addition, regiments and large educational exhibitions have been attended. Behind all these activities is a well-formulated recruitment strategy and an allocation of resources that includes one person employed to organize and take responsibility for the implementation of the activities. The results have been stunning. The Department of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering has never had any problems recruiting students in neither downward nor booming trend. While other programmes have suffered and been removed, the yearly intake has been stable and even increased.

There are many reasons to start discussing the offering of courses on the web in engineering education, such as a means to attract students to engineering education, internationalization and globalization, a new generation of students with Internet experience, and the opportunity to try new pedagogy. The purpose of this paper is to discuss web-based education from different perspectives. Experiences from web-based education are analyzed against the overall question: How can general knowledge of web-based education be transferred into engineering education and become more widespread?

Web-based platforms have emerged as an educational opportunity for universities. This article discusses the stepwise changes taken by Luleå University of Technology from being a local and regional university mainly offering courses and programs to campus students to becoming an actor in distance education. Since the teacher has to give up face-to-face contact with students, pedagogical methods and course designs are more in focus than traditional teaching. Learning becomes more important than teaching and asynchronous group collaboration becomes a new feature in the students learning process. This paper presents the road to a common educational platform at the university and gives some examples of how this platform can be used in different situations. Taking the web-based platform on board in daily work has been a relatively smooth process, even if the role of the teacher is challenged and has to be reshaped into something new.