Abstract
Students, who are leaving their home country for taking part in an international study program, face several challenges. Not only the new course of studies can be very challenging but also their whole living conditions may change significantly. This can be a severe clash especially for students who are moving to a country with a totally different cultural background in comparison to their home countries. Moreover, it can profoundly complicate the first weeks at the new university. Knowing about the difficulties the Institute of Forming Technology and Lightweight Construction (IUL) at TU Dortmund University in Germany developed a preparational online course for those international students, who are coming to the IUL for their Master of Science program in Manufacturing Technology (MMT; a special international master program). In context of this course the use of the IUL’s remote laboratory equipment was a key aspect. The course itself was implemented and delivered for the first time in 2014. By now a second updated edition was delivered in 2015. It was designed to prepare the students as best as possible for their new studies at a German university and at the same time prepare them for transnational collaboration. Hence, this course is a good example for a meaningful integration of remote laboratories into an innovative online course concept. On the one hand making use of remote laboratories and its practical integration in online courses helps to connect the international students and on the other hand it brings them into the situation to interact in context of a typical engineering situation, the experiment. The paper presents the course itself and experiences from its first and second implementation.
Highlights
AND COURSE IDEAThe world is more and more globally connected
Whereas producing companies distribute their production processes all over the globe, students increasingly seek to gain international experiences by studying abroad or doing internships in foreign countries in order to prepare themselves for working in international environments later on
In 2014 for example 206,986 international students studied in Germany and 117,576 German students went abroad to gain new international experiences [1]
Summary
The world is more and more globally connected. That counts for the economical as well as for the educational sector. That leads to the second perspective on the course idea: All of the students will work as engineers after their master program, either at scientific institutions or in industry. For both options it can be said that transnational collaboration in the working context is more important than ever. Its main goal was to prepare the students for two different contexts: Their stay in Germany and their future working environment This all should be done in a combined use of modern online communication tools and the comprehensive remote laboratory equipment at the IUL (Fig. 1; for details on the tools and instructional resources see II). After that the course itself will be explained more in detail
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