Sulamith Frerich

Virtual Labs and Remote Labs: Practical experience for everyone

Laboratory experiences should be available for a great number of students in engineering education, especially at times when the number of students is even more increasing. Virtual Labs and Remote Labs are innovative tools used for improvement. They are either simulating experiments (Virtual Labs) or remotely operated plants (Remote Labs). At Ruhr-University Bochum, the implementation of eight new labs was supported by the project ELLI (excellent teaching and learning in engineering sciences). Didactical concepts as well as sustainable implementations were among the criteria of the independent jurys decision. After their setup, the management of the variety of labs is the next step. This short paper reports the work in progress in the year 2013, the whole process is to be continued and improved.

Remote labs in ELLI: Lab experience for every student with two different approaches

With the goal of extending the possibilities for practical experience in engineering tasks, the project ELLI (Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Sciences) follows the idea of providing virtual and remote labs for students, teachers and even interested people from different disciplines, countries or skill levels. To integrate these labs into the existing curriculum and to get students and teachers used to this tool are challenging processes. Moreover, the technical development of the remote labs is as much important as the integration to an e-learning environment. Two different approaches for the development and the integration are described.

RUB-Ingenieurwissenschaften expandieren in die virtuelle Lernwelt

Die Gestaltung des akademischen Lehrens und Lernens wird unter anderem durch die Etablierung neuer Medien und Technologien beeinflusst. Ein Ziel des Medieneinsatzes ist die Individualisierung von Lernprozessen. Jede und jeder Studierende soll selbst aktiv werden, um sich ,,eigenes Wissen“ aufzubauen und zu verankern. Eine Moglichkeit, dies kunftig starker zu fordern, ist die Verwendung mobiler Endgerate zur Vermittlung des Wissens. Besonders forderlich hierfur ist der engere Bezug oder auch Zugriff junger Studierender zu neuen Technologien, der in Untersuchungen zu medialen Nutzungsgewohnheiten vielfach herausgestellt werden [1].

More Than “Did You Read the Script?”

Project ELLI (Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Science) is a joint project of the three German universities RWTH Aachen, TU Dortmund University and Ruhr-University Bochum. Considering teachers’ and learners’ perspectives, the project aims to improve existing concepts in higher engineering education and to develop new innovative approaches. In the past years, a pool of remote and virtual labs has been developed and set up in order to gain flexibility in the usage of experimental equipment in different pre-set scenarios. Teachers can either use these virtual and remote laboratories in class for demonstrating engineering practice whereas the labs can support students to individually discover scientific concepts.

Framework for Augmented Reality Scenarios in Engineering Education

The goal of the presented approach is to show a method suitable for better integration of real-time sensor data into practical education, without leaving the students to sort out the digital content by themselves. The authors want to empower teachers on-site to show their students relevant sensory data, effectively controlling the content the students can use and explore themselves. The students are enabled to find individual approaches towards the learning scenario, take different perspectives of the plant into account and try several virtual steps before the experiment is undertaken by themselves. The two main functions of the presented framework are the authoring of augmented reality content and controlling the augmented reality content of the student’s smart devices via the teacher’s master view. The authors created a simple setup phase, which is usable on-site, utilizing only one device in the master view mode. For students, the usage is even simpler, as their content is controlled via the master view. The framework technically supports an unlimited number of student clients to be controlled by one teacher view. The functionality has been established and validated with two experimental setups, both situated within the context of chemical engineering education.

GoING.ábroad:: A discipline-specific approach to promote the mobility of German engineering students

The GoING Abroad program was designed by the project ELLI — Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Science — at the Ruhr Universität Bochum in Germany in order to increase the international mobility of engineering students. A regular information session combines subject-specific information with student experiences and introduces contact persons at the university and engineering faculties. The format is accompanied by information material such as a newsletter, a website and a brochure. Starting in spring 2013, over 350 students have participated in the sessions and subscribed to the newsletter. This short paper explains the special requirements and according setup of a program that aims at increasing outbound mobility by encouraging engineering students to spend a study semester or an internship abroad. It shows how different stakeholders in internationalization can be brought together with a common objective to reduce mobility barriers and to distribute outgoing placements efficiently among students. It gives an overview of participation structure and evaluation results of the 9 info sessions conducted during the last four years. The programs overall performance will be considered as well as its acceptance among students and faculty employees.

Internationalization and Digitalization in Engineering Education

Digital, virtual and E-learning elements have increasingly become a part in higher education and, most recently, the high potential of digitalization for processes of strategic internationalization of higher education institutions is coming into focus. The collaborative project of three German universities, XYZ, is working on strategies for the internationalization and virtualization of engineering education. While these topics used to be different key areas of the project, a combination of both distinguished itself as a potential new working field. This paper introduces two pilot concepts that were implemented and evaluated at the universities Y and Z which both aim at the complementation of incoming students’ experiences in Germany by digital means. At Y, a transnational online class explores means of preparing degree-mobile engineering students from all over the world for their master’s studies in Germany. At Z, an online course was designed to accompany a summer school research exchange for US-American engineering students in order to prolong their short-term mobility by digital elements. These pilot projects were well-accepted by students and faculty at both universities and their evaluations between 2014 and 2017 have revealed valuable results for further optimization. This paper presents the results and discusses future potential.

Higher Education Institutions as Key Actors in the Global Competition for Engineering Talent – Germany in International Comparison

In order to prevent the predicted shortage of highly qualified labour in technical professions, Germany and other industrialized nations show increasing interest in strategies of controlled immigration, one being the recruitment of foreign students: Many European countries are seizing the opportunity to attract international students to support their labour market after graduating from their universities [1].

Implementation of International Master’s Programmes in Engineering Education in Germany

This paper introduces the framework conditions of the internationalization process of the higher education system in Germany and gives an overview of the implementation of international Master’s programmes in engineering education and the characteristics of student migrants in this field of studies. Developments on the macro-level clearly indicate political interest to attract more international students for German universities and the technical disciplines in Germany are already very successful in this endeavour. With a special focus on higher education reforms in engineering, this paper is based on an investigation directed at the meso-level, the motivations and strategies at the level of university and faculties for establishing such international study programmes. The results of a qualitative study will be presented that was conducted at the engineering faculties of the Ruhr-Universitat in Bochum between December 2014 and August 2015. With the overall aim of investigating in how far the decisions made on university and faculty levels are related to the general political endeavors to attract international talent, the different stakeholders’ interests and implementation strategies such as language policy were considered.

Retaining talent, addressing diverse requirements: Academic writing for engineering students

In the light of the anticipated and much-discussed shortage of skilled labor and university graduates in the STEM fields, attracting students for technological studies is an important strategic aim of German universities and engineering faculties. Currently, the so-called “doppelter Abiturjahrgang” (a result of reducing school years from 13 to 12) plays into their hands by releasing twice the amount of high school graduates into the study and work market in Germany. Still, dropout rates among students of engineering sciences are higher than in other subject fields and, consequently, universities and employers are losing potential engineering graduates despite the fact that the total number of enrollments increased. Among the factors considered to be responsible for university dropout are lacks of social and academic integration. Furthermore, formats such as mass lectures that are often part of undergraduate studies in engineering prevent teaching approaches that deal with individual requirements of students. However, a more individual approach is what the increasing diversity among university students would call for. Against the backdrop of an increasingly heterogeneous student body, academic writing presents one of the biggest challenges in engineering studies. In order to support students during their first semesters but also in writing their final theses, the project ELLI is currently implementing a multi-level concept to foster academic writing in engineering studies. At the Ruhr-University Bochum, quantitative and qualitative research was done among students and faculty members of the three engineering faculties, based on which a guidebook for writing final theses was developed. Moreover, a seminar for academic writing for undergraduate engineering students was designed, which will take place for the first time in the winter term of 2014.