World Conference on Continuing Engineering Education

Series

World Conference on Continuing Engineering Education

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https://hdl.handle.net/1853/70991

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Event Series

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Professional Education

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 52

Creating Means and Motivation for Networking—Continuing Education Programs for Engineers Based on Professional Standards (experience gained from projects implemented in a small country)

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-23) Henning, Liina

The paper outlines the experience of building partnerships and networking from three continuing engineering education development projects implemented in Estonia. The focus of the projects was creation of network between entrepreneurs, educational institutions and qualification authority for creation of integrated continuing education system where training programs are suitable for professional training but also for applying professional qualification, raising the participant’s educational level or retraining. Deriving from the wide goals of the projects the key success factor of implementing the projects was motivating the project partners for efficient cooperation. The paper provides overview of the main motivating aspects of partners identified during the projects, means of cooperation used in analyze and program creation activities also the difficulties encountered. The main conclusions of the projects are that university is a well suitable institution for coordination of networking activities. The goal of creating an integrated continuing education system that enables trainees to accomplish different aims in their life-long learning process provides sufficient motivation for the public and private sector partners to contribute in networking.
Continuing Education From High School to Postgraduate Studies: A Need of Telecommunication Industry in Colombia

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-23) Reina, Jackson

In the project "Curricular, Pedagogical and Didactic Proposal for the Formation of Technicians, Technologists and Engineers in Telecommunications" (shortly called Forteti) several proposals of professional instruction in Latin-America have been reviewed, as well of conceptual documents published by governmental and non governmental agencies in Colombia, and prospective visions of the country and the region. In addition, experts from technical, administrative and academic sectors have been consulted. As a result, several tendencies have been found, which can be order as follows: first, revalue of the engineer formation regarding from ethical, social and humanistic issues; second, development of student skills for working within groups with multiple disciplines and levels; third, postgraduate studies regarding of the professional upgrade and actualization by means of official courses and self-learning skills development which also leads to the concept of the never-ending in learning and the requirement of establish multistage between the different educative levels; fourth, the need of adequate proposal, management and development of technical and social transformation projects. Forteti research project proposes a profile for the engineer's education which takes account of, at first, the multistage process between engineering and its precedent levels: technical and technological education, because only this multistage process enables the professional and educational articulation that responds to the requirement for holistic projects in the telecommunications sector. As a result we propose three educational undergraduate cycles associated with well defined profiles for each educational level and related with different titles accepted and required for the telecommunications sector. This approach allows us to have a clear Faculty development that fully reflects the needs of our students and the organizations related with the telecommunications sector. Associate with this multistage, the social and humanistic issues have been taken into account as an important factor not for complement courses but as a transversal axe of a curriculum structured by projects or problems nuclei.
Colegio de Ingenieros Tecnólogos de Costa Rica (CITEC). Experience of Professional Board in Continuing Education

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) Mora, Dennis ; Alvarez, Diógenes

Better tools for the performance of professionals. The guild vision of the needs of continuous improvement can be supported in strategic alliances with agencies specializing in engineering practices and standards at the international level. The paper describes the process of change and the results of the Colegio de Ingenieros Tecnologos (CITEC) (1800 Professional Engineering graduate of the Technological Institute of Costa Rica) for the management and implementation of strategic alliances in a new approach the Continuing Education and the vision of best practices for continuous improvement of the professionals. The vision of continuing education for professionals in the exercise has some major axes: 1. The young engineers; 2. Professionals in the field of his overall responsibilities; 3. The specialized professionals; 4. The linkage with international engineering, technology and standards. The need for continuing education of professionals is one of the main functions to be addressed by a professional body. But that offer education and updating must have a level of quality and demand is really allowing get added value for professionals and is simply a makeup courses, lectures and seminars without a real value. Usually the training of international standard is costly and less accessible to professionals on an individual basis and one of the objectives in this area should be to achieve the highest level of professionals at the lowest cost. The CITEC and Associations by specialty: ACIMA, ACIC, ACIPI aware of their responsibilities and the characteristics that have led to update a strategic alliance with the ASME AMERICAN SOCIETY OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS, ASCE SOCIEDAD AMERICANA OF CIVIL INGNEIROS ENGINEERS and IIE INSTITUTE OF INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERS, the CITEC also maintains an agreement with the PMI Chapter CR. These partnerships are supported through a cooperation agreement directly benefit engineers by Costa Rica: access to international standardization and normalization, continuing education programs and access to the world’s information in the field of mechanical electrical engineer, industrial, civil and related branches. It has been given priority in these first steps in implementing the agreement, the issue of training in building codes and standards with the characteristic that it’s training accessible and efficient by implementing specialized courses and on-site instructors authorized in Spanish. The CITEC, through this approach, and to date has trained over 300 professionals as giving additional value-added membership to participants in those agencies worldwide. It is developing a system of certification would trigger a “binding”, professionals be updated. The links that have been established at the international level, would ensure that international standards are welcome to the best practice of our members.
Developing a New Second-Cycle University Program Curriculum According to the Bologna Process

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) Arkko, Taisto ; Lampela, Martti

This article describes how Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences is building a new secondcycle university degree programme in the field of technology. The planning and implementation of this degree programme takes into consideration the panEuropean definitions of education leading to a Master’s degree. The planning of the content of this degree programme also considers the needs of working life and the viewpoint of regional development.
Knowledge Practices Laboratory (KP-Lab) Overview

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) Markkanen, Hannu ; Barclay, Hanna ; Schrey-Niemenmaa, Katriina

KP-Lab is a five year research and development project financed by the EU 6th Framework Program conducted by 22 partners from different parts of Europe. The aim of the project is to create a learning system, which facilitates innovative practices of sharing, creating and working with knowledge in education and workplaces. The KP-Lab aims at developing theories, tools and practical models in teaching and learning as well as digital applications which suit the new knowledge practices. The applications will be mostly based on an open source so they will be widely available. Researchers in pedagogy and psychology define and investigate the models of tools and practices; technology experts investigate and develop the technological solutions; enterprises offer authentic environments for investigation and they also participate in the development of technological tools. Institutions which represent the end-users participate in the co-evolutionary processes. The development done in different areas of the project, research, pedagogical and technological development, is conducted tightly together as a co-evolutionary process. The technical tools developed support the trialogical learning theory, where learning by development of a shared object is in the centre, underlying the project and the related pedagogical practices. EVTEK’s contribution focuses on coordinating the creation of technical solutions. The development work builds on emerging technologies, such as semantic Web, Web 2.0, real-time multimedia communication and inter-organizational computing. EVTEK’s tasks include software development (semantic web, social software, mobile applications), usability of applications - planning and testing and participating in the pedagogical development through for example field trials in media technology courses for students Examples of digital applications developed in the project include Shared Space, which is a virtual collaboration space that supports the trialogical learning and work. Many of the other tools developed in the project will be integrated into the Shared Space. The digital tools and pedagogical models developed will help in the advancement of knowledge practices in educational institutions and companies. They will be suited for different types of education, including especially virtual learning and teaching. Field trials in education are currently conducted in many different areas, in degree education and continuing professional development.
Case Study Experiments of the Knowledge Practices Laboratory (KP-Lab)

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) Bauters, Merja ; Markkanen, Hannu ; Barclay, Hanna ; Schrey-Niemenmaa, Katriina

KP-Lab is a five year research and development project financed by the EU 6th Framework Program. The aim of the project is to create a learning system which facilitates innovative practices of sharing, creating and working with knowledge in education and workplaces. The KP-Lab aims at developing theories, tools and practical models in teaching and learning as well as digital applications. This presentation will outline how the experimental development work adapting trialogical learning is done with the students as part of a media engineering course called "multimedia product". The course was developed further through scenario writing (see Carroll, 2000) to reach the new pedagogical practices and technological means to support these. This work was executed in co-operation with the KP-Lab pedagogical partners. The goal of the multimedia product course is to provide an opportunity for the students to use and extend their skills on the design of a multimedia product or service in an authentic situation, still being able to get support for the process. (see Muukkonen et al. 2006 and Paavola et al. 2004). The results of this process are a product or service that is delivered to the client, as well as all the artifacts the students create together in the process. In the course, the first prototype of one of the KP-Lb tools, namely the Shared Space and its tools were used. Shared Space is an environment, which provides support and means for collaborative work around shared object that are developed. The students and teacher can comment directly to the shared objects using a commenting tool. They can link semantically the objects and tasks to express their meaningful relations. They can write collaboratively their project reports and deliverables using integrated wiki. They can annotate semantically the shared objects for example by using a domain based light way ontology. Furthermore, the students have participated in the design and evaluation process by giving feedback and ideas of how they would prefer to use the Shared Space and its tools as well as by organizing different kind of usability tests and evaluations.
Internationalisation in Continuing Engineering Education: a Case study

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) de Mari, Guus

Delft TopTech is the school of executive education of Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and offers executive master programmes. This contribution gives answers on how universities, i.e. university institutions for continuing education, can improve their performance by international cooperation. Using literature and best practices a model is developed, which has an axe for commercial responsibility and an axe for content responsibility. Nine options vary from completely centralised in Delft, via Sales offices and Partnerships to Licence selling. In the analyses, with the use of this model, it became clear that Delft TopTech should start on internationalisation in Western Europe. Staying a national institute will isolate the school in the university and it will loose its connection with customers and participants. The case study gives that the most appropriate method of internationalisation is partnerships with other universities.
New Technologies in E-learning and Creative Pedagogic in Continuous Engineering Education

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) Zvonov, Valery ; Kulagin, Viacheslav ; Mezhenin, Alexander

A panel consisting of representatives from academia and industry will discuss the student support services needed for continuing engineering education programs. The session will focus on how academia and industry can design their support for student-to-student dialog, interaction with faculty, special online advising sessions, and tutoring sessions that will be meet the needs of the various age groups and generational expectations and create a better learning experience.
Differences of Engineering Education Systems Between Japan and Germany - Consideration About Before and After Graduation

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) Sato, Takashi ; Sobczyk, Christine ; Sakamoto, Shuichi ; Ishii, Nozomu ; Tanabe, Yuji ; Goda, Masaki ; Maruyama, Takeo ; Hasegawa, Tomiichi ; Ohkawa, Hideo ; Wisweh, Lutz

Many Japanese universities normally have the educational system, which checks the students’ "knowledge" about theories and answers, but engineering education in Germany provides a system to check the students’ "understandings" instead of their "knowledge". So, Japan has specialists; however, Germany has generalists, when students graduate from universities in engineering fields. It is important that the graduates should understand and improve their weak points by comparing themselves with students from different countries and/or backgrounds.
Knowledge Practices in Workplaces (KP-Lab) -Change Laboratory (CL) - An Intervention Method for Systemically Developing Work Practices in the Rich Internet Application

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-05-22) Rantakari, Ali ; Raček, Michal ; Höynälänmaa, Mikko ; Markkanen, Hannu ; Hiltunen, Johanna ; Schrey-Niemenmaa, Katriina

This paper takes a look how the university created knowledge and practices at the KP-lab are applicable to the business sector. The constantly evolving information technologies and accelerated spreading of World Wide Web has brought new opportunities to the learning process. As a consequence, the process of knowledge gathering has been relocated to the different e-learning environments. Some of them are able to support a kind of interactive communication between tutor and a trainee [1, 2]. However, such tools do not support neither the information nor the observation gathering during the learning process, or the knowledge gathering which might in return result as a faster problem solving. On the basis of these assumptions, Change Laboratory (CL) is an option for information/observation gathering. With suitable interface it does not only gather information and data from the learning process but it is able to support development of new practices in the process of task solving too. The advantage of such approach is that these practices can either be developed by individuals or collaboratively in a group. Also, these can be further used in other sessions and in new methods. Thus, knowledge and practices contribute to the community in a developmental cycle.