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Teachers often arrange yearly field trips for students to a company or factory to get practical insights on a specific topic. However this can be a hassle due to organisational reasons and often only a couple of students are allowed to join due to, for instance, safety reasons. A field trip is however an engaging activity and can make deeper connections with the subject than book alone. A virtual tour could be an alternative for students who cannot join in the field trip. Furthermore it allows students to go on a field trip at any time, place and pace. Last year TU Delft developed a virtual tour in a wastewater treatment plant for bachelor students in Civil Engineering to explore its usability. ‘Last year a lot has been learned about challenges in the design and execution of the virtual tour’ says Danielle Ceulemans, educational researcher/designer at 4TU.CEE and involved in this project. Design guidelines for developing a virtual tour are now available.

Ruth Graham visited the University of Twente on 28 November for a workshop on rewarding teaching excellence and a keynote lecture on the future of engineering education. The presentations are included in this article.

At the start of this academic year a first pilot of the Joint Interdisciplinary Master Project (JIP) ran at TU Delft under the auspices of 4TU.CEE. A group of 13 students coming from different faculties and countries worked on real-life interdisciplinary projects brought in and supervised by Royal Haskoning DHV, Huisman Equipment and Feadship Royal Dutch Shipyards. ‘It was an interesting and challenging roller coaster ride getting it all up and running in which all participants learned along the way,’ says Birgit de Bruin, JIP project coordinator.

Universities play an important role, preparing students for a labour market that is undeniably moving towards the use of new emerging technologies. These technologies though are recognized only to a very limited extend in tertiary education as essential and helpful to improve the connection with the demands on the labour market. Therefore 4TU.CEE initiated an explorative research into emerging technologies in 2015-2017: ‘Emerging technologies; do we need them and can we make them work’. The report is now available online.

The University of Twente invites you to the Seminars: 'The ins and outs of TOM'. The Seminar is a 1 or 1.5 day event for (international) educational professionals and teachers who are interested in our innovative education model.

On Thursday 13 December the first 4TU.CEE PhD candidate, Inken Gast, is defending her dissertation titled “Team-Based Professional Development – Possibilities and challenges of collaborative curriculum design in higher education”. The past years Inken has studied the professional development of teachers at the UT during the implementation of the Twente Educational Model (TEM).

Inaugural lecture prof. dr. Perry den Brok

As per 15 September Perry den Brok has been appointed as new chairman for the 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education. He succeeds Jan van der Veen who held this position for the last four years. The 4TU.CEE board would like to thank Jan for his contribution and commitment to 4TU.CEE in his role of chairman. Jan will remain active as local 4TU.CEE leader for the University of Twente.

Evidence based educational innovation at Wageningen University

On Friday, June 15th, a group of lecturers, study advisors counsellors from Wageningen University participated in a one day workshop on ‘How to beat procrastination’. There was a wide array of topics covered that day, including: what are the cultural aspects of procrastination and other factors that influence procrastination and  its psychological roots.

In the CEPHEI project (Cooperative E-learning Platform for Higher Education in Industrial Innovation) a consortium of nine universities joined forces to  build a community of digital learners in university and industry. It aims to develop a cooperative e-learning platform for industrial innovation. The e-learning platform will consist of an open platform, with free online courses, project-based (face-to-face) education at university and it provides a community-building platform.

Fear of Failure is one of those issues that teachers and academic advisors are usually confronted with, when they encounter students who express anxiety or worries concerning the prospect of underperforming. It is an issue that worries those who work with students -and want to help them- but might be wondering how to go about it. Given the ubiquitous nature of ‘fear of failure’ among students, Wageningen University decided to include this topic in the project ‘Diversity and Flexibility’ for the 4TU.CEE Programme 2018. The workshop took place on May 9th at the Campus of Wageningen University and was facilitated by two experts; one in the field of intercultural education, Marijke Van Oppen, and the other on counselling as a psychologist, Jessica Price.

MIT, TU Delft, UTwente, Wageningen University and TU Eindhoven all recognize that 21st century engineering students need more than specialist knowledge alone to be able to work in this fast changing world. They need a wider skills set than their predecessors. Skills like creative and entrepreneurial thinking and the ability to communicate with the outside world for example. These are topics the universities are all currently working on by providing flexibility in the education programmes, more hands on education and interdisciplinary education. On 17 May MIT and the 4TU universities presented their own vision on engineering education of the future. In the discussion it became clear that all 5 universities face similar challenges, one of which is assessment. Read the article that appeared in TU/e Cursor for more insights. The presentations can be found below:

Insights from TU Berlin on professional development of teaching staff and activating large classes (1000+)