Tobias Haertel

Experiential remote lab learning with e-portfolios: Integrating tele-operated experiments into environments for reflective learning

The use of laboratories in Higher Engineering Education is an adequate opportunity to implement forms of experiential learning like research-based learning in material sciences. Introducing remote laboratories gives the opportunity to the student to do self-directed research and by that having own and unique learning experiences. Recently finished research projects e.g. like the PeTEX project implemented research-based learning by deploying real laboratory equipment without being physically in the laboratory but having access via the internet. The question in this context is how the student can document his/her own learning processes on the one hand and how the teacher can guide the student through these processes on the other. The proposed solution in this paper is an e-portfolio system on the basis of a personal learning environment. With e-portfolios the student is able to individually and collectively document and reflect what he has been doing and can share his outcomes with others. The paper outlines the important role e-portfolios as personal learning environments can play to experience remote laboratory work and to foster the creative attitude.

Teachers' Conceptions of Student Creativity in Higher Education.

Abstract Creativity is one of the important skills of the twenty-first century and central to higher education (HE). When we look closer into research on creativity in HE, however, it is not clear how university teachers conceptualise student creativity. How do teachers grasp, observe and express student creativity? Different methods such as interviews and online questionnaire have been used in this study. From the teacher perspective, student creativity is categorised into a 6-Facet-Model, in which teachers ‘see’ student creativity expressed through (1) student self-reflections, (2) independent decisions, (3) through curiosity and motivation, (4) producing something, (5) multi-perspectives and (6) when students develop original new ideas. The results provide a new understanding of student creativity from university teachers’ perspective that is useful for re-organising course designs.

Fostering the Creative Attitude with Remote Lab Learning Environments An Essay on the Spirit of Research in Engineering Education

Creativity has been proclaimed to be one of the most important 21st century skills. Facing tremendous problems, creativity and innovation were seen as key factors of a knowledgebased society able to cope with ongoing and future problems. As Engineers are addressed to play an important role in facing these challenges, the question arises in which way universities could contribute to educate creative engineers. This slightly provoking essay inducts possible boundary conditions and constraints of fostering creativity in engineering education. Moreover, it presents first results from a smallsample pre-study on higher engineering education curricula, conducted in the funded German project “ELLI – Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Education”, which suggests a lack of creativity education in the examined curricula. Furthermore, a descriptive analysis of the didactic approach of the finished EU-project “Pe-TEX – Platform for E-Learning and Telemetric Experimentation” provides information about possibilities of fostering the creative attitude in engineering education by means of remote labs. Finally, the essay resumes with future tasks for the ELLI project and open questions addressing relevant future educational and socioeconomic impacts, regarding the role of creativity in engineering education and the professionalization of engineers.

Where have all the inventors gone? Fostering creativity in engineering education with remote lab learning environments

Creativity has been proclaimed as one of the key 21st century skills. Facing tremendous problems, creativity and innovation were seen at the key factors of a knowledge-based society, able to cope with ongoing and future problems. Engineers play an important role in addressing these challenges. Their ideas, their inventions, their creativity have brought Europes prosperity, and it will depend on their inventions and creativity to ensure that progress in the future. This raises the question in what way universities contribute to educate creative engineers nowadays. The slightly provoking essay will present results of a pre-study on fostering creativity in higher engineering education, conducted in the funded German project: “ELLI-Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Education”, and will discuss the remote lab approach of the finished EU-project “PeTEX-Platform for E-Learning and Telemetric Experimentation” as good practice example. It resumes with open questions addressing relevant future educational and socio-economic impacts.

Bringing Remote Labs and Mobile Learning together

Within (remote) laboratories in Engineering Education students have the chance to do own experiments and by that gain own experiences in their learning processes. Apart from technical questions, one of the most intriguing aspects in this context is how students can document their learning process and show to others (teachers and/or other students) what they have achieved. Another aspect concerns the question of learner’s mobility during the learning process. If the laboratory can be accessed remotely, why do we constrain learners in their level of liberty by forcing them to sit in front of a fixed computer to use a location-independent environment for experimentation? Therefore, rendering this environment available for mobile devices is the logical consequence. Furthermore, integrating mobile devices into the course’s technical environment means to take a whole new approach to the teaching and learning process itself. It is especially a question of embedding mobile devices into the users’ workflow (or better “learn flow”) rather than a simple question of accessibility. The following article features an example of how remote laboratories can be linked with mobile devices and e-portfolios, thus creating a unique learning environment helping learners to document their personal learning processes and to exchange them with others while at the same time being flexible in means of time and place. This combination of topics has been realized within one subtask of the project “ELLI – Excellent Teaching and Learning in Engineering Education” at TU Dortmund University.

Entwicklung von Remote-Labs zum erfahrungsbasierten Lernen

In den Ingenieurwissenschaften bietet das Lernen in Laboren ein besonderes Potenzial zum Erwerb auch auserfachlicher Kompetenzen, das in der Regel jedoch kaum genutzt wird. Das Beispiel eines fernsteuerbaren Labors mit einer Lernumgebung, die unterschiedliche Lernpfade einbindet, zeigt, wie erfahrungsbasiertes Lernen in der Hochschule ermoglicht werden kann.

Kompetenzmodell für die operative Logistik in der Arbeitswelt 4.0

Kurzfassung Die Umsetzung der Industrie 4.0 findet im Shopfloor statt, und der Erfolg dessen ist maßgeblich von der Qualifizierung der operativen Fachkräfte abhängig. Das betriebliche Kompetenzmanagement steht daher heute mehr denn je vor der Herausforderung die Transformation der betrieblichen Prozesse zu antizipieren, um die Kompetenzentwicklungsprozesse proaktiv zu gestalten. In diesem Beitrag werden sowohl ein domänenspezifisches Kompetenzmodell, das den Status quo und die zukünftigen Kompetenzanforderungen für Mitarbeiter in der operativen Logistik beschreibt, dargestellt als auch dessen Anwendung am Beispiel „Ersatzteilelogistik“ aufgezeigt.

Integrating Remote Labs into Personal Learning Environments – Experiential Learning with Tele-Operated Experiments and E-Portfolios

The use of laboratories in Higher Engineering Education is an adequate opportunity to implement forms of experiential learning like problem-based or research-based learning into manufacturing technology. The introduction of remote laboratories gives students the opportunity to do self-directed research and by that having their own and unique learning experiences. Recently finished research projects, e.g. the PeTEX project, implemented research-based learning by deploying real laboratory equipment without being physically in the laboratory but by accessing it via the Internet. One essential question in this context is on the one hand how the student can document his/her own learning processes and how the teacher can guide the student through these processes on the other hand. The proposed solution in this paper is a personal learning environment that integrates a remote lab and an e-portfolio system. E-portfolios enable the student to individually and collectively document and reflect what he/she has been doing and to share his/her outcomes with others. The paper outlines the important role that e-portfolios can play as personal learning environments to experience remote laboratory work and to foster creative attitudes.

Too old to learn? Specific needs of senior workplace learners

Due to Demographic change universities, vocational trainings, and advanced trainings are challenged to educate learners with diverse backgrounds such as age, country of origin and educational achievement. These groups of learners are supposed to have different, individual learning requirements. However, there is still only sparsely knowledge about their needs and how to take them into account in appropriate learning scenarios. Especially the aspects of senior learners aged 50 years and older are hardly explored. In this contribution, the results of a literature review and an expert workshop on the specific needs of senior learners are presented and discussed. Firstly, an overview on current age sensitive learning scenarios is given. These do all have the claim to be attached to the professional experiences, learning interests and needs of older employees. Secondly, the different approaches lead to main requirements for designing such learning scenarios in an ideal way. Thirdly, participants of an expert workshop representing different perspectives from science and practice agreed that with regard to demographic changes, educating senior workers will become an important issue for most companies. However, they expressed very diverse and sometimes contradicting opinions on how learning scenarios for senior workers should be designed. The workshop showed that it still has to be considerated, how far these findings about senior learners differ from “good” approaches of teaching and learning in general.

Using Evernote in Engineering Education – Two Course Concepts to Explore Chances and Barriers

The introduction of mobile devices and fitted software is not that much widespread in German engineering education up to now. Hence, within the ELLI project mobile learning is one focus and the usage of iPads and the software Evernote has been introduced in two different courses. In one of the courses the students were encouraged to use these tools in order to organize and support scientific research processes. In the other one they should track personal procrastination moments in order to analyze and overcome these moments or make use of them for their working processes. In both cases it was evaluated how suitable these instruments were and if they enabled the students to work on their projects anywhere and at any time they decided to do so. The results show that the Evernote software does fit in theses contexts and support the education scenarios. However, there remain barriers and the assumption of merging private and educational contexts cannot be supported by our results.