CLUSTER 30th Anniversary Symposium

Science and Technology Education: Economic and Societal Impacts

How can engineering education impact our society and economy? How can engineering education have an impact on regional growths and local economies? How can engineering education stimulate entrepreneurship and creative technology application for a better wellbeing of all groups in our society?

During the first part of the session these aspects will be treated at the level of bachelor studies (USE courses to connect technology and society), master degrees (entrepreneurship bringing science and technology to the society) and PhD research in engineering (translating research into innovation). In the second part an interactive round table will elaborate on the future role of science and technology for our society.

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The Universities of the Future: Transnational Policies for Higher Education

The harmonization of higher education systems has been a major global trend, in particular in Europe. However, new challenges arise from international partnerships. Understanding educational climates at universities with different national background can bring convergence of education policies for the benefit of increasingly diverse students in university classrooms. The goal of this session is to debate and learn about existing efforts and tendencies of higher education policies in important regions of the world. We seek to identify similarities and differences, conver-gences and divergences, and to discuss how we can shape existing efforts to integrate them.

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Teaching Sustainability in Engineering Education

Universities of Science and Technology play a crucial role in preparing students to address sustainability challenges, including Sustainable Development Goals. This session discusses new course contents and ways of teaching related to sustainability, sharing experiences from leading experts in the field. We will also examine how the learning outcomes related to sustainability are being formulated, assessed and communicated.

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Joint Education Programmes: Added Value, Employability, Challenges and Future Developments

Double Degrees were developed at the beginning of the 90s by pioneering academics and have constantly evolved over the years until they became a crucial component of the internationalization policies of most Higher Education Institutions in Europe and beyond. The importance of these initiatives was confirmed by the creation of the Erasmus Mundus programme by the European Commission in 2003 which both institutionalized the process, increased the number of initiatives exponentially and provided for the first time specific funding for running the activities. Nevertheless, no comprehensive studies on the performance of Double Degree alumni have ever been carried out on a multi-country level and from a multi-stakeholder perspective. The REDEEM project, which was carried out by a subset of the CLUSTER members, tackled this gap. The project represented the first attempt to describe through a quantitative and qualitative analysis, what is the added value of double degrees and joint programmes, what is the typical profile of the graduates, what are their expectation and perceived impact, what is the opinion of the employers, etc. A follow up project (REDEEM 2) is currently further developing the concept and provides a comparative analysis of a new survey on recent graduates that allowed us to identify differences in expectations and perceptions in terms of geographical origin, socio-economic background, type of programme, field of study, etc.

This information is at the core of the session and will be crucial for the double degree/joint programme developers to better understand the specificities of joint programmes in their own environment and act accordingly when designing new programmes.

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Co-Creation and the Role of Students in preparing Education to the Challenges of the Future

This session will center on co-creative approaches to teaching and learning in Higher Education (HE) that allow students to interact and work collaboratively with educators. It investigates roles and possibilities of students’ feedback, opinions, and other resources such as their intellectual capabilities and personalities, integrated alongside institutional resources, that arise as many higher education institutions are facing new diversity issues as well as opportunities.

We would like to offer a brief overview on some virtual examples of co-creation within the Cluster’s network.

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Joint Student Mobility Programmes: Added Value and Future Aims

As a facilitator for internationalisation strategies, Joint or Double Degree Programmes (JDDPs) are not only interesting, but also bring challenges for national HE systems. In this session, information about JDDPs and examples of good practices will be presented. Participants will be provided with information about the concept of JDDP as a tool in the internationalisation of HE, and as a possible way of increasing quality, attractiveness and competitiveness.

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Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods

The session will start with presentations of a wide variety of innovative teaching and learning technologies and methodologies. The talks deal with virtual reality (VR) and open source technology, virtual exchange programs between partner universities, students solving tasks in interdisciplinary teams, and train the teacher in a way that they can awaken enthusiasm among students for technical issues.

After the presentations, all participants will actively be involved to discuss the influence these new methodologies and technologies have on the organization as a whole and the student and teacher specifically. Among other questions: Does the use of new technologies influence the skills teachers need to adapt to these new technologies? Which social skills are necessary to train the student to face the societal challenges of the future?

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Industry-University Relations and their Impact in Education

All CLUSTER universities have close ties with industrial partners regarding research and teaching activities. With reference to reviewing and discussing current education approaches and industry needs, this session will address questions regarding future engineering education and research. The following three phases will be in the focus of the discussion: Pre-study phase: How can we make technical engineering attractive to excite the young generation? Study phase: How can we jointly define education goals with industry to foster employability of graduates in the industrial AND the academic field? Where are the limits? Post-graduate-phase: How can industry profit from scientific research at all technology readiness levels (TRL) ?

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