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| Instituto Federal de Rondônia no Educon 2015 |
During the Global Engineering Education Conference – IEEE EDUCON 2015, held in Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia, on March 17th-20th, I had the chance to take part of some keynote sessions, short/full paper presentations, workshops and also network with people from different parts of the world. The Conference is the sixth of a series of conferences which happen among central locations in Europe, Middle East and North Africa (see http://www.educon-conference.org/educon2015/).
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| Tiia Rüütmann |
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| EDUCON 2015 - Keywords |
The conference was extremely organized and well-structured. It was hard to make choices on which paper presentations I should attend.
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| Toomas Hendrik Ilves (Estonia's president) |
Stephanie Farrell (Dublin Institute of Technology, Irland), Tarmo Soomere (Tallinn University) and James Uhomoibhi (University of Ulster, UK) performed as keynote speakers. Their contributions were all valid. Besides them, the president of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, opened the ceremony. His speech was very enthusiastic and also very close to the audience. He talked about the information society in Estonia, which I think could be related to what is happening in all western country societies, and the needs of integration of subjects.
On the first day, March 17th, the VET Teachers for the Future Spring 2015 group took a special workshop about “Education of Technical Teachers and Engineering Educators at TUT”. Tiia Ruutmann, head of Estonian Centre for Engineering Pedagogy regarded the following topics:
On the first day, March 17th, the VET Teachers for the Future Spring 2015 group took a special workshop about “Education of Technical Teachers and Engineering Educators at TUT”. Tiia Ruutmann, head of Estonian Centre for Engineering Pedagogy regarded the following topics:
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| Vet Teachers 2015 Cohort (TAMK and HAMK) |
- How should curricula be structured?
- How should classes be taught?
- How should faculty be prepared to teach?
- Why active learning?
- The main strategies of STEM didactics
- Learning styles in STEM
The most meaningful part, in my opinion, was about student dropout rate and its relations with learning styles and teaching methods. As we always have a variety of learning styles, teaching should contemplate all of them, thus blended learning should take place.
In Tallinn University of Technology (TUT), curricula are well-structured, integrating the fields of STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; and also social sciences. Therefore, learning and teaching are developed in an interdisciplinary way. Engineering Pedagogy is articulated with all the other Engineering fields, since methodologies of teaching engineering are increasingly important as professional education takes place all around the world, minimizing engineering education problems, such as high student dropout rate, traditional-technical education and its effects on the learning results: poor work-skills, technical skills not always articulated with social needs for the 21st century etc.
Engineering Pedagogy is something new for us in Brazil. We must invest on that, urgently, as our Federal Institutes have been expanding without pedagogical structure that can really respond to our needs. TUT is a great example of articulated pedagogical work.
Yet on the topics highlighted, Tiia Ruutmann mentioned the importance of teaching those skills required by the 21st century, which is not only technical skills, but in a holistic point of view, professionals who are respectful, socially responsible, team worker, problem-solver, independent, critical, mindful, open-minded, flexible, creative, innovative… and we could list a lot of adjectives, but all of them characterizing a human being seen as so, as a unique individual and a member of a society with its needs.
Faculty should be prepared to respond to different learning styles and connected to the 21st century needs. Teacher must have a sustainable professional development, which means it is ongoing, never-ending. So, learning communities must be stablished and a collaboration mindset should be in place. That’s a critical need from now on. If there’s a need for knowledge integration, then collaboration, group work skills and somehow selflessness must become a fact.
Passive learning doesn’t have a room anymore. Active learning should be present during the whole learning process, even when apparently something related to passive learning is in progress. For instance, lectures are commonly connected with passive learning, but it doesn’t have to be, if students are engaged, if they can criticize, contribute, discuss etc. That’s the only way we can create meaningful learning experience, which can be relevant for their personal, social and professional growth.
Below, I’ll register the other activities I took part of and a brief impression of each.
Experiencing innovative learning practices (March, 17th)
Session I: Practical Workshop – Arduino Robot
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| Arduino Robot Kit |
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| Task instructions |
The task was given to each group and as I had no experience on that, it was a really exciting and interesting activity. I could develop the same activity with my students, teaching English, integrated with that field.
Session II: Introduction about the activities of HITSA information Technology Foundation of Education in Estonia
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| In the Future Classrom Lab |
This experience was really exciting. We visited the “Future Classroom Lab”, where many kinds of technologies are combined in a methodological structured way to empower learning and learners.
Smart board connected to the other televisions and can also be connected to the other devices, such as tablets and smartphones.
"Smart table" - where students can play through different kinds of educational softawares.
Augmented reality (AR) in Education
Session III: Mektory building tour – different laboratories
Mektory is an innovation and business center. Its facilities are composed by many innovation labs (where you can create your prototype), classrooms and different kinds of creative learning environments, besides cafeteria, halls etc.
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| One of the 3D printing innovation labs |
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| Mektory's sponsors |
The center is sponsored by many companies and it’s a great example of education connected with the productive sectors.
Session IV: Eye tracker workshop
The eye tracker workshop presented that kind of technology and how is commonly used, as well as the possibilities we have with it. In Education, eye tracking could support struggling readers, help educators to understand the students’ points of concentration of difficulties and thus plan their actions according to students’ needs.
Key Note Sessions - March 18th and 19th
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| Session I: Connecting the teaching practice of coastal engineering with challenges of the rapidly changing environment – Tarmo Soomere (Estonian Academy of Sciences, Estonia) |
Session II: Educational Innovations that promote student engagement in Engineering – Stephanie Farrell – Rowan University, USA
Session III: Energy Use, Green IT Practices and Entrepreneurship in Higher Engineering Education and Research in Developing Nations – James Uhomoibhi – Ulster University, UK
Short/Full Paper Presentations
I have attended a lot of full/short paper presentations. The ones who caught my attention were about blended learning and go-lab. I could learn more about how to blend methodologies and how to make better use of technology in order to make learning effective.
The sessions I got more interested were related to IT and Engineering Pedagogy, Mixing and Blending MOOC Technologies with Face-to-Face Pedagogies and Go-Lab.
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| Vet Teachers For the Future Spring 2015 - HAMK and TAMK |
Below, I'll just register all the full/short paper presententions I attended:
A
Heterogeneous Supercomputer Model for High-Performance Parallel Computing
Pedagogy
Cultivation of Spatial
Thinking with Multi-view Projection
A New Method of Assessing the
Students using Video Assignments
Concept Maps and Linear
Systems: Beyond Learning Object
REMOTE LABORATORY NETWORKS
BEHAVIOR IN THE LIGHT OF THE SELF-ORGANIZATION PROCESSES
Planning and Designing Remote
Experiment for School Curriculum
CoALa – A Collaborative
Analysis Lab for an identification of user parameters for adaptive e-learning
systems
Dynamic Publishing and
Availability Management of Virtual Machines in Virtual Organization
Using Mobile Crowd Sensing to
Teach Technology and Entrepreneurship in High Schools: an Experience from
Southern Italy
Teaching Automation and
Control with App Inventor Applications
Visualizing the invisible -
Foundation collapse mechanisms
Online Tools for Making ICT
More Attractive for Students to Prevent Dropout
Randomness Impact in Digital
Game-Based Learning
How Students and Teachers
react to an AR free puzzle game: preliminary tests
Systematic Assessment of
Student Outcomes in Mathematics For Engineering Students
Game Technogies in Teaching
“Mathematical Modeling”
Problem-based Learning
Environments in moodle: Implementation Approches
A Novel Design of Management
Senior Project for Engineering Students
Educational Decision-Making
About Curriculum Development, Environments and Economics of Education
Reports from the eMadrid
Network about Blended Learning
Computer programming as an
educational tool in the English classroom
Mixing and Blending MOOC
Technologies with Face-to-Face Pedagogies
Requirements for educational
games in MOOCs
Towards a Learning Analytics
Approach for Supporting discovery and reuse of OER. An approach based on Social
Networks Analysis and Linked Open Data
Towards learning resources
rankings in MOOCs: A Pairwise based Reputation Mechanism
Towards MOOCs scenaries based
on Collaborative Learning Approaches
A Survey on the Usage of
Online Labs in Science Education: Challenges and Implications
The AppComposer Web
Application for School Teachers: A Platform for Translating and Adapting
Educational Web Applications
An Investigation with European
Science Teachers on how to Characterize Remote and Virtual Labs
Virtualizing testbed resources
to enable remote experimentation in online telecommunications education
Curriculum development of
higher engineering education by mass customization----A case study at Shaoxing
University China
Aspects Relating to Didactics
and the Problem of the Knowledge
On The Role of Challenging
Math Problems in the Discrete Mathematics Courses
A New Model for Collaborative
Learning of Programming Using Source Code Similarity Detection
The Europe Code Week (codeEU)
initiative: Shaping the skills of future engineers
Mobile learning and its
potential for engineering education
Collaborative Learning from
Mobile Crowd Sensing: a Case Study in Electromagnetic Monitoring
Mobile devices, another
teaching tool in the engineering classroom
Learning in Higher Education
by European Framework Projects. Laurea’s study module: “International
innovation work of information systems”
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