132 Educating the 21st Century's Engineers and IT Professionals Antonios Andreatos Hellenic Air Force Academy, Greece Chapter 9 ABSTRACT In this chapter, some important aspects of preparing engineers and IT professionals of the 21st century are examined, especially in the context of new media communication skills in trans-national and trans- cultural globalised environments. Initially, the chapter refers to the value and need of informal and continuing education; next, it reviews recent learning theories aiming at covering learning in today's complex, networked, and trans-cultural landscape; it also presents competences demanded in contem- porary and emerging engineering and IT workplaces, as well as the skills needed by the 21st century's engineers and IT professionals. Finally, the chapter has proposed educational policies, enterprise poli- cies, and suggestions for self-directed learning which will help preparing engineers and IT professionals for the workplace and will also enable them to continue learning, individually or in teams, both face to face and distance mode, and participating in real or in virtual communities of practice. INTRODUCTION This chapter is mainly for engineering and in- formation technology (IT) students and teachers; it is also of interest to higher education institu- tions policy makers, responsible for the design or review of programmes, as well as, enterprise DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0243-4.ch009 human resources departments. This chapter will be useful to working engineers and IT profes- sionals who want to learn how they can profit from new media in order to remain competitive in today's highly antagonistic work environ- ment. We look at things from the perspective of an individual, as well as, from the high level of decision-makers of organisations. The assertions are based on rich bibliography for further read- Copyright © 2012, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.