The European Project Semester at ISEP: the challenge of educating global engineers

Abstract

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.

Fostering Professional Competencies in Engineering Undergraduates with EPS@ISEP

“…The project proposals refer to multidisciplinary real-world problems, i.e., draw on knowledge from diverse fields, and are open-ended, i.e., specify exclusively top-level requirements such as the compliance with the applicable directives/norms and the budget. According to the EPS 10 Golden Rules, the teams, which are composed of four to six students from different scientific backgrounds and nationalities, are fully responsible for the development of their projects [29]. Multicultural and multidisciplinary educational backgrounds contribute to product development and innovation, develop communication skills, and catalyse collaborative learning among team elements.…”

Multipurpose Urban Sensing Equipment—An EPS@ISEP 2018 Project

“…EPS challenges students from multiple educational backgrounds and nationalities to join their proficiencies [5] to solve multidisciplinary real-life problems in close collaboration. On the 26th of February 2018, ISEP assembled its EPS students into four groups, including the current team composed of Maarten van der Most, from Netherlands, 22 years old, studying Industrial Engineering and Management; Wouter Smit, also from Netherlands, 26 years old, studying Industrial Design; Damien Cordeiro Marques, from France, 20 years old, studying Mechanical Engineering; Maria Bagiami, from Greece, 23, studying Environmental Engineering; and Mostafa Farrag, from Scotland, 20, studying Electrical Power Engineering.…”

Developing an aquaponics system to learn sustainability and social compromise skills

“…EPS aims to prepare future engineers to think and act globally, by adopting projectbased learning and teamwork methodologies, fostering the development of complementary skills and addressing sustainability, ethics and multiculturalism. In particular, sustainable development is a pervasive concern within EPS projects (Malheiro, Silva, Ribeiro, Guedes & Ferreira, 2014).…”

“…In 2014, during the first week of the EPS@ISEP, the students were presented with several project proposals, including the development of an aquaponics system, incorporating eco-friendly sustainable techniques (Malheiro et al, 2014). Aquaponics is based on a productive system that can be found in nature.…”

“…In EPS, the first task of a team is to define the set of team governing rules -Team Work Agreement -using the mechanism proposed by Hansen (Malheiro et al, 2014). This set of conflict resolution rules is determined and signed by all team members and is archived in the team folder.…”