European Platform for Innovation and Collaboration between Engineer Students Erasmus Project

Project Title

European Platform for Innovation and Collaboration between Engineer Students

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2014

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

EPICES (European Platform for Innovation and Collaboration between Engineer Students) is based on two avenues of previous and ongoing work, forming the background for EPICES. These avenues are:

1. The French pedagogical research project PLACIS, managed by SUPMECA and funded by the French National Agency for Research; reference ANR-11- IDFI-0029. In every sub-project, on a multidisciplinary subject submitted by a company, a team of students is formed. Students work in their home university and use the latest collaborative and engineering tools.

2. The partner universities of the EPICES projects are all active in development of engineering education through numerous projects in problem- and project-based learning (PBL). This has been driven by the progressive change of the structure of engineering studies. Namely, switching from the trilogy “courses – supervised practical work – lab work” to a more complex and open teaching & learning way with a changing role for teachers and the need of new assessment methods and tools, especially in PBL environment.

In order to carry out EPICES and make it efficient, EPICES partners were selected as following:
1. Leading technical universities with multicultural and multidisciplinary background and evidence-based development actions in engineering education, including experience, publications and visibility at EU level, pedagogical development, experience in PBL and interest in developing pedagogical support for teachers. These partners are all active members of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI).
2. Selected PLACIS members, as deemed relevant to the EPICES project.
3. SUPMECA, the EPICES coordinator.
SUPMECA, Aalto University (Aalto), Riga Technical University (RTU), KU Leuven, Politecnico di Torino (PoliTo), Universita di Napoli Federico II (UNINA), Universitat Politecnica di Valencia (UPV) and SEFI carried out this project and achieved the goals.

The main objectives of EPICES were to:
• Develop some PLACIS like sub-projects and use them as well as PLACIS sub-projects as study materials in order to help achieving the other three following objectives,
• Build a joint platform via sharing best practices in roles of facilitation for PBL in engineering courses. Via this platform, provide teachers with models for facilitation roles that can optimally support student learning in e.g. different courses, disciplines, at different institutions, with different groups of students and multicultural settings.
• Develop training packages for teachers to enhance their specific competencies as facilitators of PBL, by providing easy access to digitalized instructions and advice on how to plan and execute courses in order to reach high engagement of student learning.
• Generate a quantitative assessment method for PBL, in which the development of engineering and general skills in addition to specific disciplinary content can objectively be assessed by the teacher.

EPICES addressed 5 target groups: 2 main target groups (teachers and students), 2 secondary target groups (academic and industrial institutions partners of the project).
The main impacts expected at the beginning of the project have been achieved as following:
1. On teachers participating in the project:
• Enable them to change their traditional roles from teachers to coaches,
• Make them fully integrate PBL approach and guide them to successfully facilitate authentic and engaged learning outcomes for students in PBL.
2. On students participating in the project:
• Make them fully integrate PBL approach and enable them to enhance their roles as learners in a PBL approach,
• Demonstrate how they can use elements like assessment tools and take into account the issues related to the relation with a tutor or to distance collaboration to work efficiently with different stakeholders in their studies and in their future jobs.

EPICES achieved to build a digitalized platform, based on data collected, tools, results, and guidelines on PBL in engineering to the whole community, making the implementation and facilitation of PBL easier for institutions and especially teachers.
The main outcomes of EPICES are 1) the platform, which enables the facilitation of PBL amongst multidisciplinary engineering courses, allowing the selection of suitable teacher facilitation roles for coaching of students in PBL. In conjunction to the development of the platform, 2) a quantitative assessment method applicable to different engineering disciplines was constructed and tested (helping teachers to evaluate the students’ learning results, analyze acquired skills individually, calculate the final grade of the course and analyze the whole project group performance), and 3) training packages for teachers were developed.

All the results of EPICES have been presented disseminated at both international and local events and are online : https://sites.google.com/view/epicescoach/home

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 295209 Eur

Project Coordinator

INSTITUT SUPERIEUR DE MECANIQUE DE PARIS & Country: FR

Project Partners

• RIGAS TEHNISKA UNIVERSITATE
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II.
• SOCIETE EUROPEENNE POUR LA FORMATION DES INGENIEURS
• UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA
• KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
• POLITECNICO DI TORINO
• AALTO-KORKEAKOULUSAATIO