Partnership for virtual laboratories in civil engineering Erasmus Project

Project Title

Partnership for virtual laboratories in civil engineering

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 : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Pedagogy and didactics; Open and distance learning; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

Bauhaus-University Weimar (BUW), Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), University Aveiro (UA), University Osijek (UNIOS), and Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology (IZIIS) constitute a strategic partnership (SP) with the PARFORCE project within the framework of Erasmus+. The SP aims at developing a joint platform for digital/virtual laboratory experiments to support European civil engineering higher education, and thus, making an essential contribution to understanding of teaching materials by the students. The main objective of the project is achieving the availability of various laboratory experiments, which are not a part of standard education at each university, but are carried out at specialized institutes. The experiments planned in this project are: boundary layer wind tunnel experiments at RUB, non-destructive and destructive experiments on shaking table at IZIIS, and fire resistance tests at UA. Participation in experiments allows students to apply their theoretical knowledge and competences for solving complex practical tasks, and thus, supports an overall understanding of the teaching material by building a “mental model”. In this context, virtual reality provides a possibility for students to participate virtually in experiments, carried out at another institute, without compromising realistic setting and content-correctness of the experiment.
Competences are described as cognitive abilities and skills available to individuals or learnable by them to solve certain problems, as well as the associated motivational, volitional, and social willingness and ability to use problem-solving in variable situations successfully and responsibly [1]. The formation of competence requires not only pure knowledge, but also understanding of what has been learned [2]. The path to the formation of a mental model can be taken with the help of text and image information. For the human brain, pictorial information is easier to process than textual information, and in cognitive image processing the path to the mental model can be shortened [3]. Based on these findings, virtual reality scenarios offer the possibility of contributing to a more efficient formation of a mental model due to their pictorial nature.
The SP builds upon recent results in digital research and teaching (e.g. projects DigiLab4U, AuCity2 and 3reCapSL). The project partners bring these results together, apply them to concrete partner-specific experiments, and then transfer the results of experiments into a digital environment, which is then made available for the general public.
The project also aims at developing a concept for a successful integration of project results into teaching at European universities. For this aim, an Instructional Design Guide describing current didactic methods for digital teaching and focusing on interactive virtual environments will be developed by the project partners. Especially, different teaching formats (synchronous, asynchronous, and collaborative learning) will be addressed, and two learning/training activities for teachers or students/employees will be organized within the project.
Moreover, partners will work to understand the pedagogic value of international digital exchange by considering lessons from comparable HEIs existing digital curricula, goals and program designs, as well as by observing benefits among learners, educators, and HEI’s culture.
The result of the strategic partnership will be provided by three intellectual outputs, which will be practically applied in an elective pilot module for M.Sc. students “Experiments in a Virtual Environment”. This course aims at communicating to students different modeling ideas for laboratory experiments in civil engineering. To achieve this aim, the course will be done in an internationalized and digitalized way, and will be combined with a blended mobility supporting collaborative learning of students and providing a platform for discussions on learned teaching material. The pilot course, which will be taught jointly by the project partners, expands the curriculum of all partners and, after a successful evaluation, will be continued, as well as opened to external students in compliance with the formalities.
The learning/teaching activities planned for students serve to provide the mathematical basics of signal and data analysis, machine learning and deep learning, and thus, supporting the work of students on evaluation of experimental data available from virtual labs.
The results and experiences of the proposed project will be presented, at the end of the project, in special sessions at various national and international conferences in the form of presentations and publications (e.g. 19th International Symposia of Macedonian Association of Structural Engineers and SDSS 2022 in Aveiro).
The proposed project opens the opportunity to develop new collaborative forms of location-independent networking of laboratory infrastructures.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 287470 Eur

Project Coordinator

BAUHAUS-UNIVERSITAET WEIMAR & Country: DE

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDADE DE AVEIRO
• Ss. CYRIL AND METHODIUS UNIVERSITY IN SKOPJE
• SVEUCILISTE JOSIPA JURJA STROSSMAYERA U OSIJEKU
• RUHR-UNIVERSITAET BOCHUM