Performance-Centered Adaptive Curriculum for Employment Needs
Portada
Curricular development required to support Adaptive Predictive Expert Control projects and business inindustry
Autores:
Antonio Nevado Reviriego, ADEX S.L.
Hector Pastor Borgoñón, ADEX S.L.
Rebeca Rada Llano, ADEX S.L.
Ken Slaven, ADEX S.L.
Juan Martín Sánchez, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Ricardo Requena Peréz, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Resumen― This paper has been written to identify the needs and competencies required for new graduate student intake in a small company dedicated to the design and build of process control systems for a variety of applications in a diverse range of industries. While emphasis has been placed on core technical competencies such as IT (Information Technology), electronics, control techniques, industrial process knowledge, project management and perhaps an ability to relate to diverse and unfamiliar industries from a control perspective, there is also an emphasis on the softer cognitive skills such as communication, presentation and being effective in a team. There should be a recognition among students that base skills will change as the industrial environment changes and new technologies emerge. The combination of skills required should lead therefore to a process of continuous improvement, change and life long learning well beyond the content of the course.
Europe wide Industry Certification Using Standard Procedures based on ISO 17024
Autores:
Richard Messnarz, International Software Consulting Network GesmbH (ISCN)
Damjan Ekert, International Software Consulting Network GesmbH (ISCN)
Prof. Michael Reiner, University of Applied Sciences Krems (FH Krems)
Miguel Angel Sicilia, University of Alcala de Hernares
Resumen― ECQA (European Certification and Qualification Association) is the result of a series of EU funded projects from 2005 – 2012. This included European projects such as EQN (European Quality Network, 2005 – 2007), EU Certificates Campus (2008 – 2009) and DEUCERT (Dissemination of EU Certification), the ECQA nowadays acts as an organization that is independent from funding. The members of ECQA are widely spread all over Europe and vary from universities to companies as well as individuals. ECQA is aimed at a demographic problem of education and training in the European Union. For people at 40 – 50 it is many years ago that they attended the university and required skills nowadays are changing every 2-3 years. This means that their skills get outdated and we experience in Europe a growing unemployment from the age of 45 upwards. Universities in Europe are currently not addressing this problem. EQN developed a so called role based qualification concept where e.g. an existing software engineer (who studied informatics some 15 years ago) can identify job roles to upgrade so that he remains a value for the organization. He might receive additional industry qualification for e.g. a safety architect (additionally learning how to enrich existing software architecture with functional safety aspects). This way the person, would for instance, grow into a safety architect position and a younger person who knows more about new programming techniques gets his old position. EQN then developed certification mechanisms for this role based approach for university and industry educational partnerships. EU Cert Campus collected about 15 job roles, structured the corresponding skills sets and established online services. The online services comprise skills browsing, skills assessment, and online training. So people from industry can attend job role based qualification training from the work place. DEUCERT established ambassadors for this new job role based qualification concept Europe and worldwide. DEUCERT also helped to create a critical mass of partners. At the moment we do have 26 job professions (ready and in progress) that are certified all over Europe and already outside of the European Union. The concept is meanwhile supported by approx. 60 universities and training bodies in Europe. Human resource managers from leading multinational companies called ECQA “a success story” because so far the universities in Europe do not address the mentioned demographic problem and ECQA has already achieved more than 11000 online trainings and more than 6600 certificates in European industry and at university PhD programs. The processes of the ECQA are mapped onto the ISO 17024 international standard for the certification of persons. The PAC project will integrate further skills sets and certification options into the ECQA platform.
Special Session: Performance-Centered Adaptive Curriculum for Employment Needs
Autores:
Nevena Mileva, Plovdiv University
Alexander Gochev, INDEX-6® Ltd
Mihail Milev, Technology-Enhanced, Performance-Oriented Learning Software Solutions (TEPOLSoftS Ltd)
Damjan Ekert and Richard Messnarz , International Software Consulting Network GesmbH (ISCN)
Ken Slaven, Hector Pastor and Rebeca Rada , Adaptive Predictive Expert Control (ADEX)
Mohamed Tawfik, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
María José Albert, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Manuel Castro, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Resumen― The global competitive labor market and industrial sectorial trends have demanded new requirements and restructuring in the prevailing engineering curriculum of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in terms of linking the educational contents with the industrial real-world, and, on the other hand, promoting cooperation between universities and enterprises. In response to these needs, the PerformanceCentered Adaptive Curriculum for Employment Needs (PAC) project was launched in order to develop business adaptive and employment and labor market oriented master degree programs for computer, electronics, and fiber-optics engineering. The project aims to input business and employment into curriculum development. Likewise, it considers concrete and specific new standards of industry at national and regional level, not only in terms of formal qualifications but also in terms of detailed new skills requirements and competences. Thus, it will be able to foster employment by preparing qualified professional profiles in a particular occupation. The project provides virtual mobility of students and teachers by developing open educational resources on-line within the framework DIPSEIL (Distributed InternetBased Performance Support Environment for Individualized Learning) which is released in five languages to organize different courses from available modules and tasks for performance according to the needs of a specific job place. These educational resources comprise innovative ICT-based learning content, services, pedagogies and practice for lifelong learning and vocational training. The PAC project is based on a partnership between European universities and enterprises and it supports progress towards European-wide certification of qualifications. In this session, the project is presented outlining the main objectives and the contributions carried out by each partner.
Special Session: Plovdiv University (BULGARIA) expertise and solution in Performance-centered adaptive curriculum for the needs of industry in Plovdiv region
Autores:
Dimitar Tokmakov, Plovdiv University
Alexander Gochev, INDEX-6® Ltd
Nevena Mileva, Plovdiv University
Mihail Milev, Technology-Enhanced, Performance-Oriented Learning Software Solutions (TEPOLSoftS Ltd)
Resumen― Plovdiv University has almost five years of experience in the implementation of performance support system principles in traditional university education and PSS Learning Objects in DIPSEIL CMLS as well as in Physics Engineering, Medical Physics and Information Physics and Communications bachelor degree courses and in Information and Communications Systems master degree courses. Partnerships between universities on the one hand and enterprises on the other are crucial when it comes to matching the needs for skills on the labor market in the region with those students can actually offer. In this regard our industry partners Index 6, TepolSofts, which operate in the field of the adaptive performance-centered curriculum, will help us in the skills and personal competence profiles identification. On the first stage of the project the potential of employers' surveys will be explored as a tool for analysing the skills and abilities needed for the electronic and software engineering job positions. The right skills portfolio will be defined and the matrix of learning outcomes will be developed. The overlapping areas in the competence profiles and the higher education programmes at Plovdiv University will be identified. Going forward the three organizations will take into account the outlined key competences and will develop a tailor-made training PAC curriculum, teaching, delivery and assessment methods, adapted to the relevant job positions. The basic characteristic of the PAC training curriculum will be its adaptability.
State-of-the-Art Remote Laboratories for Industrial Electronics Applications
Autores:
Mohamed Tawfik, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Elio Sancristobal, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Sergio Martin, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Gabriel Diaz, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Manuel Castro, Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED)
Resumen― There is no doubt that the implementation of practical sessions in engineering education paves the way for students to be familiar with the instruments and thus, with the industrial realworld. Moreover, they augment the learning outcomes by strengthening the understanding of scientific concepts and theories. Unfortunately, there exist a wide gap between the engineering educational curricula and the industrial real-world owing to the lack of experimentation availability. This is due to high cost and administration burdens that have hindered the adoption of practical sessions causing a significant decline in experimentation within engineering education. Recently, with the advent and exploitation of computer and communication technologies, remote laboratories have broadly proliferated among many universities. Remote laboratories provide on-line ubiquitous workbenches unconstrained by neither temporal nor geographical considerations and allow an interactive learning environment that maintains student attention. In this context, hundreds of remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications have been developed and numerous technologies have emerged in order to facilitate their construction and implementation. This paper reports on state-of-art remote laboratories for industrial electronics applications. and their design stages. The paper addresses many solutions in the development and the design stages, along with cutting edge technologies involved. This is in order to foster remote laboratories adoption within industrial electronics disciplines and hence, increase the industrial competencies in engineering education.
©2Editores: Alfonso Lago Ferreiro, Martín Llamas Nistal, Andrés A. Nogueiras Meléndez
012 TAEE
ISBN: 978-84-8158-588-9 / DL: VG 431-2012
