The paper deals with the connection between the classical teachings and a modern one known as MOOC for Massive Online Open Course. This paper reports the experiences made at our Institute of Technology in using MOOC to improve our academic achievement. Students from the two first years of the Bachelor in Electrical Engineering and Computing Science are concerned with these experiences. The students have to perform a mentored project each semester. Within this framework some students have been asked to attend MOOCs on subjects that were not exactly in the schedule of the Bachelor. Two MOOCs were provided by the Queensland University of Technology (www.qut.edu.au) and the professor Peter Corke (www.petercorke.com) and were dealing with robotics and vision, the third MOOC was organized by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (www.epfl.ch), and was an introduction to programming in C++. The keen interest of students for these subjects is a first explanation for the success the experiences encountered, but this explanation must be completed and therefore we are going to give a more precise description of the experiences to enlighten the reasons of their success. Each experience has been organized with approximately the same timetable. A first meeting has been organized two weeks before the beginning of the MOOC. During this meeting, the local team of lecturers explained the subject of the MOOC and gave prerequisite knowledge: for example, for the first MOOC about robotics, lecturers gave explanations about matrices and Matlab. The first meeting was also devoted to the organization of the following weeks: when and where will the participants meet, who were the teachers involved, how could these lecturers help, and so on…As soon as the MOOC has begun, all local participants spent half a day together each week, each one first working on his own and then discussing about the problems he had encountered. The local multidisciplinary team is important for students who need knowledge in different domains, but also appreciate to see how a lecturer can work and progress in a subject he is not specialized in. This part of the work has to be managed by teachers in the same way as an athletic training, and this coaching is the key of the important rate of success of our students in regard with the MOOCs. The last meeting occurred one week after the MOOC had ended and consisted in an evaluation of the MOOC and of the work made. This meeting gave us ideas for further works.
Human interference with the Earth’s climate cannot be ignored any longer. Renewable energy sources need utmost attention in all energy sectors. For buildings, geothermal energy for heating, cooling, and domestic hot water is a sustainable solution. Horizontal ground heat exchangers (HGHE) demonstrate promising results with low installation costs. Research is focused on increasing their thermal performances by structural improvements and ground thermal proprieties improvements, with little research on using auxiliary heat to increase their performances. A numerical model for an HGHE was established to investigate the effects of auxiliary heat sources on the performances of the HGHE. The results demonstrate that heat transfer into the HGHE increases the overall ground temperature at the end of the heating season by 138.50% compared with no heat transfer from auxiliary heat sources. The ground freezing period decreased by approximately 24.74% by having a heated basement, approximately 40.20% by transferring heat with solar thermal panels, and approximately 62.88% by using both auxiliary heat sources. The difference between the undisturbed ground temperature and the ground temperature with no auxiliary heat sources at the end of the season was 3.45 °C. The difference between the undisturbed ground temperature and the ground temperature with all auxiliary heat sources resulted in 0.92 °C.
This article brings forward a solution for compensating the reactive power of the railway electrical traction system. Using the V-characteristics of the synchronous machine, reactive power can be produced or absorbed from the power supply network, keeping the power factor at a value as close to 1 as possible. Given that the load consumed by the railway electrical traction system is variable, it is necessary to be able to promptly correct the power factor. The SCADA system will change the synchronous machine’s operating characteristics relative as a function of the angle between the voltage and the current that are set at a given time by the consumers (electrical locomotives) passing through the railway section. By compensating the reactive power, the amount of active power supplied to the electrical network of the railway traction system is increased, without the need to modify the cross-section of the electrical conductors.
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