News

A university is involved in research and education, but how is the balance between these two? Is the one more important than the other or not? How do they reinforce each other? These questions were addressed at the Education Day of the University of Twente on 19 October with the theme ‘interplay between research and education’. Participants look back on an inspiring day.

Last summer a group of 20 honours programme students from Delft University of Technology visited Tokyo to find out how Japan’s engineering education is keeping up with the rapidly changing engineering world. They visited and interviewed technical companies and Tokyo Institute of Technology and discussed themes such as interdisciplinary systems thinking, intrapreneurship and personal leadership. The report with their findings is now available.

Recently a workshop on Composing the Engineer of the Future was held at the Dutch Design week and at the Teaching Lab at TU Delft Campus. Both sessions were organised by the 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education and Reframing Studio. The workshops introduce a vision of the future of the Engineering profession and different roles derived from driving forces in society. Reframing Studio has joined our project this year helping to build a more sustainable vision on the future engineering roles.

In spring 2016 Marie-José Verkroost, Rob Lemmens and other colleagues of Faculty ITC (Geo-information Science and Earth Observation) of the University of Twente started a project to create a Living Textbook. The project aims to create a different type of textbook, suitable to be used in modern blended learning and distance education settings. One aspect of this is to provide a better overview of the relationships between the concepts that are explained in the textbook by using a visual overlay, a concept map, connected to the digital book in a Wiki environment. This concept map should help students getting a better grip on the course materials. A first pilot shows that both students and lecturers are enthusiastic about this new learning tool sponsored by 4TU.CEE.

4TU.Centre for Engineering Education and Matthijs van Dijk of Reframing Studio will be giving two workshops titled ‘Composing the Engineer of the Future’, at the Dutch Design Week and at the TU Delft Teaching Lab. In the two workshops the same methodology will be discussed, but different themes are addressed. Sign up now!

On 5 October lecturers and educational support staff gathered in Utrecht to find out what Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have to offer to Education. Pierre Dillenbourg, Professor of Learning Technologies at EPFL, took us on a trip through the world of virtual and augmented reality and explained when it can be useful for education purposes. Max Louwerse, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University told about his experiences with the mixed reality lab in Tilburg. The general feeling is that VR and AR should only be used in education when it contributes to the learning experience of students. Aldert Kamp, 4TU.CEE leader at TU Delft has written a blog about the event. 

Recently two of our dedicated 4TU.CEE staff have left our institute to pursue new challenges. We would like to thank Perry den Brok, projectleader at TU/e and Lisa Gommer, project coordinator at University of Twente, for their hard work. Chris Rouwenhorst is the successor of Lisa and Birgit Pepin will replace Perry. Hereunder they introduce themselves. We warmly welcome them to our team!

Read the latest 4TU.CEE weblog written by Aldert Kamp about incorporating entrepreneurial skills and innovation in your curriculum.

The 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education (4TU.CEE) invites teachers, support staff and educational management to submit project proposals to innovate their educational practice at the TU/e in accordance with the TU/e educational vision.

The term ‘interdisciplinarity’ has become a buzzword at TU Delft in recent years. But what is it and how to apply it in your own courses? These questions (and more!) were answered in a workshop on strategies for interdisciplinary teaching and learning that was held on 15 June. Some 30 lecturers attended the event. They look back on a stimulating session where they shared tips and tricks with each other and workshop facilitators from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of the university of Amsterdam.

The 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education was well represented at the conference in Calgary. Renee van de Watering and Linda Mebus of TU Delft facilitated an interesting workshop about E-moderating in online education in the Blended Learning theme. Renate Klaassen (TU Delft) gave a presentation about research that is now undertaken into the state of the art of virtual reality in engineering education. Aldert Kamp facilitated two workshops on the impact of future developments in engineering education on the CDIO network. Jan van der Veen of Twente University of technology gave a workshop on Teacher Team Designing of Interdisciplinary Courses. A blog that relates of the CDIO event in Calgary has been written by Jan van der Veen and Lisa Gommer of UT.

Education professionals in higher education can now apply for funding to bring their vision on innovations in education in practice. Within the Comenius programme 2018 three types of funding can be allocated: Teaching Fellows, Senior Fellows and Leadership Fellows.

The four Dutch universities of technology have launched a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) named ‘Entrepreneurship for Engineers’. It is designed to encourage and help more people put their ideas to innovative use and start their own company.

At TU/e three researchers are involved in setting up an Internet of Things (IoT) innovation space lab, since the start of this year. IoT, the concept of basically connecting any device to the Internet and/or to each other, is quickly gaining an industrial foothold worldwide. The need for IoT experts is growing, but they are hard to find. The IoT lab is TU/e’s answer to this growing demand.

4TU.CEE has been asked by the UvA Institute of Interdisciplinary studies to host the National Interdisciplinary Education Conference in 2018. During the well-received first 'National Interdisciplinary Education Conference' that took place in February 2017, Dutch and Belgian Institutes of higher education shared inspiring examples and experiences with participants on interdisciplinary learning and teaching. A welcome initiative since interdisciplinary education has yet to become part of the mainstream in higher education.