Transformation of a traditional face-to-face engineering study program into a digital online program - A case study of Global Production Engineering

The need for Digital Education (DE) in higher education has been growing for the past years, as the landscape of education became more diverse and global. It has become apparent with the COVID-19 pandemic that, in terms of width, DE had been mostly neglected so far. In the past year, the master program Global Production Engineering (GPE) at Technische Universität Berlin has been enhanced by a complete digital track, called GPE-Digital. In order to design this online study program a student survey was conducted and lecturers have been interviewed. The results were analysed and requirements for both lecturers and students were identified. Chances and challenges have been identified and a "tool box” for teaching and learning was developed. It contains a multimedia studio, a learning platform, a cloud platform et cetera. Lecturers are supported to develop and adapt their lecture-concepts and to choose the tools needed, which led to a variance of teaching-concepts. In this paper, after presenting the findings of both the interviews and the survey, the "tool box” is presented and its various possibilities for implementation are shown by the example of four different courses offered at GPE-Digital. These examples contain both synchronous and asynchronous teaching and different approaches of preparing joint sessions and lectures. Finally, based on the courses the benefits and challenges are discussed and rough approaches for exploiting the benefits and tackling the challenges are given. © 2022 SEFI 2022 - 50th Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education, Proceedings. All rights reserved.

Preliminary Results on the Online Lessons of IDPE Department of University of West Attica 2019-2020

During the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 in Greece that coincided with the spring semester of the year 2020, conventional face-to-face lessons presented a threat to public health. As a result, house confinement measures were taken. Universities, due to their offering either directly or via their lifelong education centers, were partially prepared to offer distant learning solutions for their students during the pandemic. The lessons, in the general case, were delivered in an ad hoc manner utilizing teachers' personal experiences and preferences creating some pressure on existing infrastructures. In the case of the Department of Industrial Design & Production Engineering at the University of West Attica, things were more organized than in the general case: there was a, more or less, uniform practice of preferring synchronous lessons and some monitoring was planned in order to evaluate the application for future reference. While data collected in the process are still going through statistical analysis there are some preliminary results that can be reported here.

Life cycle assessment teaching innovation: experiences from a Brazilian higher education institution

Purpose>The inclusion of sustainability in higher education courses has been debated in recent decades and has gained particular emphasis throughout the COVID-19. This paper aims to show how the context of the pandemic, which demanded the transition from in-person classes to virtual classes, was used to illustrate better the concepts of life cycle assessment (LCA) for Production Engineering students in a Brazilian University.Design/methodology/approach>The research strategy used was action research. Throughout the discipline offering, the environmental impacts resulting from in-person and remote classes were comparatively assessed through a practical activity using LCA. Students' behaviour and perception of the activities were recorded by the professor and discussed with the other researchers on the team. At the end of the course, students answered a questionnaire to assess their satisfaction with different aspects of the discipline, and these data were analysed via Fuzzy Delphi.Findings>The results focus on discussing the pedagogical aspects of this experience and not the environmental impacts resulting from each class modality. It was possible to notice a greater engagement of students when using a project that directly involved their daily activities (food, transportation, use of electronics, etc.) compared to the traditional approach of teaching LCA concepts. In this traditional approach, the examples focussed on the industrial sector, a more distant context from the reality of most students. Student feedback demonstrated great acceptance by them regarding the approach adopted.Originality/value>This study contributes to expanding debates about sustainability insertion in higher education and the training of professionals more aligned with the sustainable development agenda.

Advancement in production engineering education through Virtual Learning Factory Toolkit concept

The growing relevance of digitalization in production requires the enhancement of human skills and competences in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Higher education has to cope with this need by providing the necessary ICT skills to future industrial engineers, so that they have a good understanding of the complexity of industries in the 21st century. This paper presents the conceptual development and testing of a Virtual Learning Factory Toolkit (VLFT) that integrates digital tools used in production management with engineering education. The digital tools integrated into the VLFT can help students to exploit enabling technologies such as simulation and virtual reality in their manufacturing studies and practical projects with industrial companies. Moreover, digital tools were tested by using a structured workflow that consists of different learning activities related to manufacturing system configuration. Students practised the digital tools with the help of use cases in the form of joint learning labs, after which the students' feedback was collected and analysed.Alternate :Digitaliseerimise kasvav tähtsus tootmises nõuab info- ja kommunikatsioonitehnoloogia (IKT) osas töötajate oskuste ning pädevuste parendamist. Kõrgharidus peab selle vajadusega toime tulema, pakkudes tulevastele tööstusinseneridele vajalikke IKT-oskusi, andmaks neile hea arusaama 21. sajandi tööstuse keerukusest. Käesolevas artiklis on tutvustatud virtuaalse õppetehase tööriistakomplekti (VLFT) kontseptsiooni väljatöötamist ja katsetamist, kus on ühendatud tootmise juhtimises ning inseneriõppes kasutatavad digitaalsed tööriistad. VLFT-sse integreeritud digitaalsed tööriistad aitavad õppuritel kasutada tootmisalastes õpingutes ja tööstusettevõtetele suunatud praktilistes projektides digi tehnoloogiaid, nagu simulatsioon ning virtuaalne reaalsus. Lisaks testiti digitaalseid tööriistu, kasutades struktureeritud töövoogu, mis koosneb tootmissüsteemi konfiguratsiooniga sidustatud eri õppetegevustest. Õppurid praktiseerisid kasutamisjuhtumite abil uudseid digivahendeid ühistes virtuaalõppelaborites, seejärel koguti ja analüüsiti õppurite tagasisidet.