Sustainable engineering master module – insights from three cohorts of European engineering team

Bartlomiej Gladysz,Jan Ola Strandhagen,Tulio Tollio,Elzbieta Jarzebowska,Holger Kohl,Felix Sieckmann,Tim Stock,Marcello Urgo,Cecilia Haskins

doi:10.1504/ijsm.2020.107130

Abstract

Mobility and transnational migration are current social developments among the population of the European Union. These developments in both society-at-large and companies, linked to the challenges of sustainability, lead to new requirements for working in the European Union. Teaching and learning in higher education needs to adapt to these requirements. As a result, new and innovative teaching and learning practices in higher education should provide competencies for transnational teamwork in the curriculum of tomorrow's engineers in order to ensure their competitiveness in the job market. A transnational project-oriented teaching and learning framework, which provides the future key competencies for young engineers was implemented in the course European Engineering Team (EET). Engineering students from four countries participated in a new project-based course that focused on the development of innovative and sustainable products and opportunities. The goal of this paper is to present results and lessons learnt from three cohorts of EET.

Highlights

A transnational project-oriented teaching and learning framework, which provides the future key competencies for young engineers was implemented in the course European Engineering Team (EET)
The goal of this paper is to present results and lessons learnt from three cohorts of EET
Engineers today must be able to work in an international environment and cope with challenges of working in a team as well as cooperate and interact with colleagues remotely

Summary

Introduction

Sharma et al (2017) evaluated approaches to teaching sustainability concepts in multidisciplinary classes of engineering students. They found that course organisation, student difficulties working in multidisciplinary teams, and limited student engagement in projects are barriers in such courses. Several projects have incorporated action-based and transnational curricula in engineering education They fall into two categories; virtual and physical collaborations. The physical-oriented approach is characterised by short-term, practice-oriented working phases where students convene at a specific location. It includes hands-on experiments and case studies for 16 learners established between Portuguese and German organisations (BASE, 2017). It includes hands-on experiments and case studies for 16 learners established between Portuguese and German organisations (BASE, 2017). 28 weeks long, a transnational course was prepared by four European (France, Germany, Ireland, UK) universities in the area of construction engineering and management (Lane, 1994)

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