This paper is about an explorative research into the use of emerging technologies in higher engineering education. New technologies are poised to better prepare students for the labour market and therefore help to endow vital innovative and creative skills. It is not yet fully clear what these skills are, but technological innovations are a good indicator of what to expect. Emerging technologies are technologies not yet widely adopted like there are 3D printing, Virtual Reality and Internet of Things. The diversity and the complexity of these technologies require a better understanding to decide about the value of such technologies for education. The research aims at the development of an approach that will help teachers to investigate, test, and assess the usability of such a technology in their micro-environment of teaching and learning. This explorative research comprises an examination of the current use and experiences in education and the industry, an indebt analysis of some of the technologies and some small-scale experiments concerning the use of such technologies in daily educational practice. The paper summarizes the research results 1 Corresponding Author P. de Vries, pieter.devries@tudelft.nl 45 th SEFI Conference, 18-21 September 2017, Azores, Portugal 2 so far. Notably education is challenged to acquire an active role in assessing the usability and maximizing the opportunities of these technologies