This paper describes the collaborative learning environment, aligned with the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, provided by the European Project Semester (EPS). EPS is a one semester capstone project programme offered by eighteen European engineering schools as part of their student ex-change programme portfolio. In this international programme, students are organized in teams, grouping individuals from diverse academic backgrounds and nationalities. The teams, after choosing a project proposal, become fully responsible for the conduction of their projects. By default, project proposals refer to open multidisciplinary real problems. The purpose of the project is to expose students to problems of a greater dimension and complexity than those faced throughout the degree programme as well as to put them in con-tact with the so-called real world, in opposition to the academic world. EPS provides an integrated framework for undertaking capstone projects, which is focused on multicultural and multidisciplinary teamwork, communication, problem-solving, creativity, leadership, entrepreneurship, ethical reasoning and global contextual analysis. Specifically, the design and development of sustainable systems for growing food allow students not only to reach the described objectives, but to foster sustainable development practices. As a re-sult, we recommend the adoption of this category of projects within EPS for the benefit of engineering students and of the society as a whole.
Current engineering education challenges require approaches that promote scientific, technical, design and complementary skills while fostering autonomy, innovation and responsibility. The European Project Semester (EPS) at Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto (ISEP) (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme (30 European Credit Transfer Units (ECTU)) for engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities that intends to address these goals. The students, organised in multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real multidisciplinary problems during one semester. The EPS package, although on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). Hence, the students enrolled in this programme improve their transversal skills and learn, together and with the team of supervisors, subjects distinct from their core training. This paper presents the structure, implementation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering practices and promote internationalisation and engineering education innovation at ISEP.
Contribution: An analysis of the extent to which sustainability is present in the syllabi, project briefs, report templates, and student final reports of the three Iberian European project semester (EPS) providers, over a five-year period.Background: EPS is a one-semester capstone project framework that adopts project-based learning and multicultural, multidisciplinary teamwork. Educating engineers for sustainable development requires fostering critical and ethical thinking and a desire for equity, solidarity and preservation of natural resources, and cultural and genetic diversity. Existing engineering capstone design programs emphasize solving real world problems, hands-on training, and soft skills, but few focus on sustainability aspects of engineering design. The three Iberian EPS providers adopt project-based learning and teamwork methodologies, promoting the development of transversal skills and addressing sustainability in a multicultural and multidisciplinary background.Intended Outcomes: To show that the three Iberian EPS providers follow these recommendations and contribute to raising students' awareness of sustainable development.Application Design: The proposed sustainability learning assessment method collects evidence from syllabi, project briefs, report templates, and final reports to extract faculty and student perspectives. The sustainability-related terms collected were processed into word cloud format, allowing a simple and intuitive interpretation of students' understanding of sustainability, and in co-occurrence network format, to understand if sustainability has a pervasive or confined presence within the reports.
The European Project Semester at ISEP (EPS@ISEP) is a one semester project-based learning programme addressed to engineering students from diverse scientific backgrounds and nationalities. The students, organized in multicultural teams, are challenged to solve real world multidisciplinary problems, accounting for 30 ECTU. The EPS package, although focused on project development (20 ECTU), includes a series of complementary seminars aimed at fostering soft, project-related and engineering transversal skills (10 ECTU). This paper presents the study plan, resources, operation and results of the EPS@ISEP that was created in 2011 to apply the best engineering education practices and promote the internationalization of ISEP. The results show that the EPS@ISEP students acquire during one semester the scientific, technical and soft competences necessary to propose, design and implement a solution for a multidisciplinary problem.
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