EXTEND Project: Systematic Approach to Curricula Development

EXTEND project is aimed at modernizing approaches to teaching engineering disciplines in Russia and Tajikistan, increasing quality of education and possibilities of employment for young engineers, students’ motivation and making engineering education attractive. Modern universities carry out not only professional training of students, but also prepare competitively capable personnel who can survive and thrive in modern free market relations, accompanied by a variety of forms of ownership and competition. International educational projects are relevant as they supply universities with international experience and job possibilities. Therefore, foreign languages competence is of key importance for engineers of future generation, and is a means of forming professional, communicative, linguistic and cultural competences. Success of teaching foreign languages depends not only on teachers’ skills, but on carefully selected and elaborated didactic materials as well. EXTEND project team exchange ideas and experience that result in fruitful discussion of issues concerning elaborating new courses to improve engineering education. International teams, which include EXTEND project participants from European, Russian and Tajik higher educational institutions will carry out the task. Project EXTEND is an open kind of consortium, which implies that members from partner countries subordinate to its leader and share joint responsibility for commitments of the consortium.

Teaching in Higher Education: Students’ Deep Learning of Brewing by Labwork

The amount of theoretical and practical information to be given to students from engineering food specialty is increasingly greater. Within this perspective, it is important to use teaching-learning methods which to develop students’ cognitive ability through the efficient by of them of knowledge acquired at fundamental and specialized disciplines. The article aims to present in an integrated graphical manner the laboratory entitled “Determination of alcoholic concentration of beer by distillation” within the discipline of “Technology and control in the malt and beer industry” that is taught to students in the field of Food Engineering. The integrative approach to the laboratory theme is based on the generation of a graphical organization of the laboratory work content, thus enabling an efficient guidance of the teaching-learning process. On the same structure of the graphical organization of laboratory work are processed and interpreted experimental results, resulting in students’ deep learning of brewing by laboratory work. In conclusion, the use of integrated graphical manner in the teaching of laboratory work allowed students to achieve much better results in the assessment of laboratory activity, to find an improvement in self-organizing and self-evolving and to be more confident about the scientific research activity.

Cross-Sectional Competences For 4.0-Mindsets In VET

The present world of work and the private life world are constantly changing. This digital transformation is due to Megatrends, to manure in buzzwords like Industry 4.0, computerization or digitization. Although this developements are slowly becoming apparent, it seems to be clear that future work environments are also becoming more complex. In order to be able to act and shape competently, it is necessary to strengthen the cross-sectional competences of current and future workers and VET-students. This article is a plea for the didactic design and implementation of such cross-sectional competences in the educational practice: Netcompetence can be a sustainable construct for the holistic strengthening of VET students, skilled workers and the human being in a 4.0-world.

From Classroom to Career in Sibiu Romania – Engineering Students’ Perception on Internships and School Practices

This article aims to highlight the most important ideas about internships and school practices from students’ point of view. The paper is structured in three parts. In the first section the topic based on building a career in Romania while being a student is discussed along with the employers’ expectations of having experience for getting a job and the problematic of today educational system. Further on the differences between traineeships and internships are detailed according to the Romanian framework and international sources to see exactly what do these mean and which one weights more for a company at the time of interviewing. Taking into the account what has been mentioned a survey was conducted among students from Faculty of Engineering where 100 replies were received. The questions asked highlighted how often Romanian students are being a part in such an activity, which are means of information they use to find out about the open positions and the students’ degree of satisfaction about the opportunities internships and school practices offer them, on a long-term aspect.

A Training Needs Assessment for Teaching and Educating Sustainability

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is a strong debate subject that push education stakeholders of all levels to consider actual challenges of sustainability. The main objective is to re-shape the young generation behavior into an active and participatory one in order to face the actual challenges of climate change, scarce resources use, consumption efficiency, lifecycle thinking, social equity and other topics related to sustainable development dimensions and objectives. In this context, the article aims to present the research for the training needs assessment (survey based on a questionnaire applied internationally in Romania, Hungary, Slovenia and Portugal) that has contributed to the TeachSUS project development and implementation. The research results have been considered as valuable information for the innovative solution of the training programme design, in the context of the TeachSUS project.

Entrepreneurial Learning and AI Literacy to Support Digital Entrepreneurship

The formation of the entrepreneur as a person for digital transformation is important and considered, in a large part, to be due to learning. Entrepreneurship is “a process of new value creation” and digital entrepreneurship is understood as “a subcategory of entrepreneurship in which some or all of what would be physical in a traditional organization has been digitized”. The integration of artificial intelligence - AI into business world can automatize some tasks and make entrepreneurs more “creative” and fulfilled, which would obviously benefit the companies that they work for.” Entrepreneurial learning is a basis for education of entrepreneurs and should supports digital entrepreneurship within the process of designing, lunching and running a new business within digital transformation. It should include AI courses in the learning and teaching process to achieve AI Literacy competence.The first part of the paper includes results of literature review and of interviews that the author has done with entrepreneurs within some European projects about different forms of entrepreneurship, particularly digital entrepreneurship and the use of AI. A review of literature about entrepreneurial learning and basis components, which characterizes it, is given in the next part including also experience of the author in teaching and training entrepreneursThe last part of the paper presents some new approaches within education by using entrepreneurial learning including AI Literacy oriented to digital workplaces and digital entrepreneurship. Developments within European projects with the participation of the authors are also given.

Training Concept for Raising Awareness and Building Skills for the low Carbon Economy

Decarbonization and achieving a low carbon economy and lifestyle are important goals for the next generations of young people. The concept proposed in this paper aims to introduce the Romanian students, on a voluntary bases, to the field of climate change mitigation through decarbonization, by organizing a series of workshops and trainings. We will address topics like renewable energy, circular economy, zero waste systems, cleaner production, new resources, innovation management and smart solutions. The participants to the events of the project are intended to become “message bearers” and to act as change agents in their future work places. A community will be formed in the virtual environment (Facebook page, email group, Twitter account, YouTube channel) with all the persons involved in the activities of the project, that will permit the continuation of information and good practices exchange.

Open Educational Resources - in Engineering Education, Case Study at UC/AGH, UB and ULBS

To change the educational scene in the epoch of the digital generation there is the possibility of using Open Education (OE) and Open Educational Resources (OER). The term “open educational resources” refers to resources with free access to use, adaptation and redistribution. The objectives of the research are to determine the degree of knowledge and use of OER in three Engineering Universities in three countries (Poland, Hungary and Romania) and to find out whether there is a relationship between the institutions in terms of knowledge and use of OER. The measurement is made by applying the survey method on a sample of n = 192. As a tool we use the questionnaire with 15 questions structured in three chapters: knowledge of OER; using OER; opinions about OER. In this analysis we summarize: the presentation of the degree of familiarity with some OER-related concepts, the use of special search engines, the use of free software sources, the frequency of use of OER and opinions on different types of OER that could be exploited in the future. For the description of relationship between nominal variable we use contingency tables and diagrams and compare the frequency data with the Pearson Chi-square test.

The Spatial and Temporal Properties of eLearning: an Exploratory Study Regarding the Students’ Perspective

The paper aims to analyze and comment the current eLearning environments considering the space and time characteristics in order to better understanding of certain antecedents’ factors for eLearning system acceptance and effective use by students. The current paper illustrated the eLearning platforms – from the differences between online and traditional face to face learning to the spatial thinking and learning process – using as a case study the minds of students from a technical University of Romania.

New role model for teachers in Higher Education?

The traditional university was for decades not called into question as a place for R---amp---D and higher education.At the one hand this enabled successful independent research, at the other hand there was few need to reflect traditional structures of knowledge transfer.The nowadays omnipresent decrease in financial resources has caused universities to compete for financial support from the business sector; additionally universities have to justify their existence for their duties in education for providing the society with academic skilled working forces. This leads to a competition between the universities and to attract applicants they have to boost the attractivity of the offered study programs. Education became a market.The traditional methods of ex-cathedra teaching have been the standard mean of knowledge transfer for a long time. The pedagogical concepts at the tertiary level were neglected; in many institutions the teaching duties were seen more as a burden than mission.The paper will show that the values of our great philosophers are still valid and how the new teaching approach of Dual Education can fulfill requirements of industry for young academics at the entrance to business life.The development of dual study programs and a new pedagogical approach in teaching methods may be one mean to face the challenges for the successful education especially in the technical sciences.