News

4TU.Centre for Engineering Education and Matthijs van Dijk of Reframing Studio will be giving two workshops titled ‘Composing the Engineer of the Future’, at the Dutch Design Week and at the TU Delft Teaching Lab. In the two workshops the same methodology will be discussed, but different themes are addressed. Sign up now!

On 5 October lecturers and educational support staff gathered in Utrecht to find out what Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have to offer to Education. Pierre Dillenbourg, Professor of Learning Technologies at EPFL, took us on a trip through the world of virtual and augmented reality and explained when it can be useful for education purposes. Max Louwerse, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University told about his experiences with the mixed reality lab in Tilburg. The general feeling is that VR and AR should only be used in education when it contributes to the learning experience of students. Aldert Kamp, 4TU.CEE leader at TU Delft has written a blog about the event. 

Recently two of our dedicated 4TU.CEE staff have left our institute to pursue new challenges. We would like to thank Perry den Brok, projectleader at TU/e and Lisa Gommer, project coordinator at University of Twente, for their hard work. Chris Rouwenhorst is the successor of Lisa and Birgit Pepin will replace Perry. Hereunder they introduce themselves. We warmly welcome them to our team!

Read the latest 4TU.CEE weblog written by Aldert Kamp about incorporating entrepreneurial skills and innovation in your curriculum.

The 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education (4TU.CEE) invites teachers, support staff and educational management to submit project proposals to innovate their educational practice at the TU/e in accordance with the TU/e educational vision.

Aldert Kamp, 4TU.CEE leader for TU Delft has been designated as Global Director of the worldwide university network of CDIO at the CDIO Annual Conference 2017 in Calgary. He succeeds Johan Malmqvist of Chalmers University, the founder of the CDIO network. Together with the second Global Director from Canada, he is ultimately responsible for the operationalisation of the network that consists of nearly 150 engineering universities worldwide. Objective of CDIO is to draw up and develop a new vision for engineering education fit for the 21st century. Kamp: ’The CDIO™ INITIATIVE is an innovative educational framework for producing the next generation of engineers’.

The term ‘interdisciplinarity’ has become a buzzword at TU Delft in recent years. But what is it and how to apply it in your own courses? These questions (and more!) were answered in a workshop on strategies for interdisciplinary teaching and learning that was held on 15 June. Some 30 lecturers attended the event. They look back on a stimulating session where they shared tips and tricks with each other and workshop facilitators from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies of the university of Amsterdam.

The 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education was well represented at the conference in Calgary. Renee van de Watering and Linda Mebus of TU Delft facilitated an interesting workshop about E-moderating in online education in the Blended Learning theme. Renate Klaassen (TU Delft) gave a presentation about research that is now undertaken into the state of the art of virtual reality in engineering education. Aldert Kamp facilitated two workshops on the impact of future developments in engineering education on the CDIO network. Jan van der Veen of Twente University of technology gave a workshop on Teacher Team Designing of Interdisciplinary Courses. A blog that relates of the CDIO event in Calgary has been written by Jan van der Veen and Lisa Gommer of UT.

Education professionals in higher education can now apply for funding to bring their vision on innovations in education in practice. Within the Comenius programme 2018 three types of funding can be allocated: Teaching Fellows, Senior Fellows and Leadership Fellows.

The four Dutch universities of technology have launched a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) named ‘Entrepreneurship for Engineers’. It is designed to encourage and help more people put their ideas to innovative use and start their own company.

At TU/e three researchers are involved in setting up an Internet of Things (IoT) innovation space lab, since the start of this year. IoT, the concept of basically connecting any device to the Internet and/or to each other, is quickly gaining an industrial foothold worldwide. The need for IoT experts is growing, but they are hard to find. The IoT lab is TU/e’s answer to this growing demand.

4TU.CEE has been asked by the UvA Institute of Interdisciplinary studies to host the National Interdisciplinary Education Conference in 2018. During the well-received first 'National Interdisciplinary Education Conference' that took place in February 2017, Dutch and Belgian Institutes of higher education shared inspiring examples and experiences with participants on interdisciplinary learning and teaching. A welcome initiative since interdisciplinary education has yet to become part of the mainstream in higher education.

This April an article of 4TU.CEE PhD candidate Inken Gast appeared in the Review of Educational Research. She conducted a research study on Team-Based Professional Development Interventions in Higher Education. The review has shown that these interventions can be successful in fostering teacher learning in higher education.

Coming July a group of 20 honours programme students from Delft University of Technology will visit Tokyo to find out how Japan’s engineering education is keeping up with the rapidly changing engineering world. They will visit and interview technical companies and Tokyo Institute of Technology and will deliver a report to 4TU.CEE with their findings.

Laboratory teaching is costly, because it takes up much time and facilities are expensive. With growing student numbers the pressure on facilities increases even more. This calls for efficiency in the labs. At Wageningen University, an online ‘Lab video’ project was initiated to cope with these challenges.