News

At TU/e Johanna Höffken initiated a project to design a USE (User Society Enterprise) learning line on ‘responsible innovation in a global context’ last year. The project aims to explore and implement stimulating learning approaches, which link and integrate university education with the global context. Central in this approach is the idea to truly engage with the context when designing technical solutions. This is why close collaboration with companies and other societal stakeholders is sought throughout the learning line. Höffken and her colleagues received funding from the innovation fund of 4TU.CEE Eindhoven to carry out the project.

The first Comenius Leadership Fellows are granted. Six professionals in higher education will be able to implement their ideals and ideas for educational innovations. One of the scholarships went to WUR and focusses on interdisciplinarity.  A theme that is high on the agenda of 4TU.CEE.  Each professional is awarded a Leadership Fellow of €250,000 for implementing an educational innovation across an entire faculty or even an entire institution. They were selected from 23 proposals.

Recently two 4TU.CEE blogs have been published. Birgit Pepin, 4TU.CEE leader of TU/e speaks in her blog of the position paper OECD and engineering education. In it she summarizes the document by highlighting some of the thoughts that she found most valuable for engineering education, and with the view to the “engineer of the future” and engineering education 2030.

Ready for the next step in your career?  Join the online course ‘Design your next career move’ and use the five-step career-thinking model to explore, design and open up opportunities. The course is now offered all year-round. This self-paced course is aimed specifically at engineers. Whether you are in the early stages of your career or an experienced professional, following a systems approach will give you a unique advantage when planning and designing your next career move.

On 15 June psychologist Jessica Price will give a 1-day workshop designed to support lecturers who struggle with procrastinating tendencies of their students. It will provide you with useful information and strategies that will support you in helping students to develop the mind-set and the capacity to start and finish their projects on time! This free workshop is given at Wageningen University. All 4TU staff is welcome. For more information and to sign up visit our 4TU.CEE website.

What comes next? Is what teachers ask after finishing their University Teaching Qualification (UTQ/BKO). A first group of Twente staff now finalised their SUTQ trajectory by presenting their educational research or design. UT Rector Thom Palstra stressed the importance of educational excellence. SUTQ pioneers will be asked to think along with educational innovations. Career trajectories will allow for more educational emphasis. R&D topics presented included: Serious gaming; using wicked problems; digital testing in maths; flipped classroom; mathematica for quantum physics; plagiarism. Outcomes will soon be available via the 4TU.CEE innovation map.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), considered to be the best university of technology in the world, has reviewed the teaching at TU Delft and three other universities of technology as part of its ‘educational transformation’. For the benchmark, MIT reviewed and analysed the most cutting-edge engineering education currently available and the education expected to lead the field in the future. The fifty experts interviewed sometimes placed TU Delft on the list of current leaders and sometimes on the list of future leaders. As a result, TU Delft appears in the top 10 of both lists (4th and 7th respectively).

A first group of UT teaching staff will finish the new Senior University Teaching Qualification trajectory. Rector Thom Palstra will hand out the SUTQ certificates on March 6. Participants will pitch their personal educational research or design project. Some examples of projects: Wicked problems in spatial engineering (Mark van der Meijde), Serious gaming in civil engineering (Andreas Hartmann), Digital testing in mathematics (Harry Aarts), Flipping the university classroom (Carine Doggen) and Modelling in quantum physics (Jeroen Verschuur). Results of each project will be posted on the innovation map. The second SUTQ trajectory is scheduled to start in May 2018 and is still open for applications.

It is a familiar problem, a class of 200 students and only 20 of them can participate in a field trip. The others will have to do with photos or schematic visualisations to familiarize themselves with procedures and plant processes. It is clear that this is not an ideal situation for deeper learning. A 360 degrees virtual tool could prove to be an alternative for those students who cannot visit the actual plant because of limited financial and organisational resources. At TU Delft such a tour is now being developed for bachelor students in Civil Engineering. ‘Coming March they will be able to take a 360 degrees virtual tour to a Waste Water Treatment Plant’, says Danielle Ceulemans, educational researcher/designer and 4TU.CEE programme coordinator.

Thom Palstra, rector at University of Twente, announced that there will be opportunities for staff to be promoted based on a stronger weight of their achievements in the educational domain. As a first step faculties are asked to consider whom of their associate professors would be entitled for a professorship based on a set of criteria.

4TU.CEE is pleased to announce that it will host the SEFI conference in the year 2020. The University of Twente is the leading organiser, supported by the other three universities of technology and neighbouring universities of applied sciences Saxion and Windesheim.  The programme committee is looking forward to share visions on future engineering and to discuss the many challenges in engineering education and solutions found by different SEFI members. In the coming period 4TU.CEE will be making preparations to welcome approximately 350 participants from all over Europe. The conference is set to take place from 20 till 24 September 2020. We will keep you informed!

At the 14th Annual NACV  expert-conference (network academic communication skills),  Renate Klaassen of  4TU.CEE  TU Delft spoke about the added value of virtual reality systems in presentation techniques. The attendants were inspired by the results of our research and the lessons on what you should do to use VR effectively in Education. They were specifically interested in the feedback that machines may provide to upgrade presentation skills. One participant of Wageningen University, who also attended our VR on-boarding day last October, claimed to use the VR-presentation app “virtualspeech.com” as a voluntary means of practice in his course. 

On 30 January the second National Interdisciplinary Education Conference took place at TU/e. The day was chaired by Lex Lemmens and Ines Lopez Arteaga provided an inspiring keynote based on her own experiences. Birgit Pepin gave a short presentation about 4TU.CEE and how interdisciplinary education is at the heart of the centre for engineering education. 

Last January the CDIO European regional meeting took place in Moscow. 4TU.CEE ran a workshop on university career frameworks that balance teaching and research achievements. TU Eindhoven was accepted in the CDIO network with the entire TU/e Bachelor college. Lex Lemmens, dean of the Bachelor College, explained in his presentation why the Bachelor College wanted join and what TU/e has to offer to CDIO. An impression of the CDIO meeting is given in the 4TU.CEE blog of Jan van der Veen.  

The day after the NIE conference the Eindhoven team of 4TU.CEE organised the TU/e Innovation Day. Special attention was paid to innovations in the context of the Innovation Space. After a short introduction about the TU/e vision on education in 2030, participants could choose between four different workshops. They represented issues of the vision 2030 agenda and how the agenda (and its principles) could be implemented and practiced.