Intellectual outputs

The result of the strategic partnership will be provided by three intellectual outputs, which will be practically applied in an elective pilot module for M.Sc. students “Experiments in a virtual environment” as well as two blended mobility PhD courses: 

• Intellectual Output 1 (IO1): Instructional design guide – didactics of media learning environments
  • Expected results: Methodological framework summarized in text and published with examples.
• Intellectual Output 2 (IO2): Methods and algorithms for digital learning tools evaluation
  • Expected results: a set of guidelines for evaluation, including measures summarized in text and published as well as tools for quantitative analysis.
• Intellectual Output 3 (IO3): Remote-access Experiments in Structural Engineering
  • Expected results: A set of experiments accessible in a virtual environment on a free accessible web-platform. Corresponding publications to support the dissemination and knowledge about it.

All learning/training activities supports individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences. The planned intellectual outputs will contribute to it, whereas especially the intellectual output 3 “Remote-access Experiments in Structural Engineering” creates an added value to innovative practices in a digital era.

Intellectual Output 1 (IO1)

1.  Virtual environments for experiments
   
   Virtual Reality experiments simulate selected physical experiments that are not actually carried out during studies due to dangers or because of the effort involved, in a 3D, realistic and content-correct representation. This concept is demonstrated in the PARFORCE settings by real, physical experiments, which are presented and located in a virtual environment with certain interaction possibilities. The main innovative objective is the availability of elaborate experiments, which are not standard but are carried out at specialised institutes, to a potentially huge community of students. In the present project these are boundary layer wind tunnel experiments at the Ruhr University Bochum, non-destructive and destructive experiments on shake tables at the Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Engineering Seismology (IZIIS) and fire tests at the University of Aveiro. This will enable the expansion of the educational opportunities for a broad group of students at the partner universities. The master students of civil engineering courses at the universities of Weimar and Osijek will act as pilot users in the project. One aim is to open up the different model ideas in experiments in civil engineering and to communicate them to the students. This is to be done in an internationalised and digitalised way.
   
   
2. eLearning: Planning and designing teaching with digital tools
   

   » The Didactic Meeting at Bochum (see Transnational Project Meeting) is intended to present a comprehensive overview of the possibilities and offers of eLearning at the PARFORCE project. Digital tools as well as possible application scenarios will be discussed and different support options will be shown. The aim is to use this information to motivate the planned further steps for the implementation of digital synchronous and asynchronous teaching offers. The event will look at how online cooperation can be well planned and structured. In this context, you will learn about the characteristics, advantages and disadvantages of different tools for online cooperation and possible application scenarios. In addition, topics are addressed which frequently cause problems in practice, e.g. active participation or feedback.

   » Moodle: Basics and collaborative tools as well as tests and tasks:

   The aim of the introduction is to familiarize participants, namely students and teaching and non-teaching staff, with the use of the basic and advanced possibilities of Moodle. On the basis of an exercise course, the course setup, the provision and administration of documents, the sensible use of communication and collaboration tools and the development of automatically evaluable tasks will be trained (GrAFOS). The course focuses on the use of communication and collaboration tools in Moodle. These include forums, wikis, blogs, diaries (journals), videoconferencing and glossaries. In addition, the joint work in a chat room and the maintenance of a database will be discussed. By means of a demo course the participants will get a vivid insight into the handling of the different collaborative possibilities. The calendar of events and the corresponding time schedule will be built and tracked within Moodle environment. In the course of the event, a demo course will provide advanced knowledge of the assessment tools integrated in Moodle, such as short quizzes, tests and tasks, but also graded forum contributions. The short quizzes or tests will be taught to be designed as participant self-evaluation or assessment tools. Special emphasis will be placed on the creation of automatically evaluable tests and the different types of tasks and questions available. Furthermore, the handling and the various ways of using the Grading Centre will be explained.

3. Use and empowerment of tutors within the PARFORCE project
   
   To support the international student groups Researcher Learning in the PARFORCE project is an innovative methodological-didactical approach in which students in internationally composed student groups or teams participate in the joint development of multi-scale models in virtual teaching-learning formats, which are implemented in experiments in virtual environments.The special and diverse demandswhich this type of learning places on students cannot be met by all students equally due to the focal points of their previous heterogeneous educational biographies. Consequently, the focus is shifting to personnel support capacities in particular, which enable intensive and individual support in the sense of mentoring of intercultural student groups. For this reason, etutors are appointed to support and ensure the intended acquisition of competence by the students and to accompany.

Intellectual Output 2 (IO2)

International digital learning, its purpose and pedagogical framework, is building upon creation and development of a contemporary environment, offering learning and research experience attained from distant educators to learners in their own classroom. The educational value of international digital exchange, which is taking advances of ICT resources, is therefore gained by enlarging a classroom with a connection and access to broader research community. By recognizing the technology not as a replacement for an educator but as a possibility to offer an exposure to international audience and peers, a wide range of skills is sparked to be developed in learners as well as in educators. Such skills e.g. writing, speech, use of digital media, presentations and communication with learners and educators from different countries, are critical in building a proper educational journey for young people of today. These can be transferred successfully later in their academic or industrial career. As the massive change to digital learning due to the current pandemic has shown digital learning provides its own set of problems, such as finding a balance between synchronous and asynchronous teaching or the higher concentration problems during synchronous teaching in comparison to class-room teaching.

Furthermore, digital learning combined with international exchange promises a low-cost, high-reach approach to expand education opportunities, particularly in areas where the current know-how is specialized on a national or even European level. Currently established criteria and strategies for digital learning and evaluation of digital learning are rather generic and do not take into account the specific requirements of Civil Engineering or even Engineering in general. The aim of IO2 is to understand the pedagogic value of international digital exchange by considering the lessons from comparable HEIs existing digital curricula, goals and program designs, as well as by observing benefits among learners, educators and HEI’s culture. This also includes covering advanced variables that make the curricula effective in order to answer what would make an internationally competent learner and educator. Therefore, the strategy of conducting benchmark tests will be at first to observe, to reflect and to link it to existing curricula and approaches, and how understand the ways how does this affect learners and their learning within a challenging international environment.

A first step will be executed by means of thoughtful inquiry to identify what are characteristics for a successful initiative in digital learning environments by recognizing current and future learners’ and educators’ expectations. The topics that will emerge from Intellectual Output 1 will provide crucial guidelines about ensuring adequate digital media, professional development, and broad support from educators to the administration, as well as attention on clear curricular goals and selecting a model that aligns with the requirements of each HEI. In addition, it will wrap up and evaluate the recent experiences (due to the Covid-19 restrictions) from lecturers, who had to transform ad hoc standard lectures into digital/virtual formats and students, who have to change their study routines. Furthermore, students’ feedback will be collected for evaluation of the effectiveness of the ad hoc transformation.

The following issues will be addressed:

• learning experience, behavior and attitude of learners when confronting an international digital learning environment;
• support of curricular aims by international digital learning exchange and their impact on learners’ education;
• types of necessary resources and support for provision of effective international digital exchange curricula.

Intellectual Output 3 (IO3)

The constant technological development in the last decade enabled the people around the world to communicate easier than ever before. Even though possible, the experiments in the field of structural engineering seldomly have been performed remotely. The practice has always been physical presence of most participants in the project. Due to the global 2020 Covid19 pandemic, the online meetings and remote access had tremendous increase of use in every aspect of the modern life. Hence, after 55 years of continuous operation in the Institute of earthquake engineering and engineering seismology in Skopje – IZIIS, the first remote access experimental testing was performed. The activities have been performed in the framework of mutual collaboration and demand by Cracow University of Technology, Faculty of civil engineering (CUT FCE).

In addition, for the human brain, pictorial information is easier to process than textual information, and in cognitive image processing the path to the mental model can be shortened [6]. Based on these findings, virtual reality scenarios offer the possibility of contributing to the more efficient formation of a mental model due to their pictorial nature. Related to this, virtual and augmented reality offers further advantages as a means of choice to complement university engineering education. Due to the high degree of immersion, the learning process can take place on real objects, under real-looking proportions and conditions. The (perceived) reference to reality thus causes an increase in experience and an integration of what is seen into the mental model via the shortcut of cognitive image processing.

The strategic partnership aims at developing a joint platform for digital/virtual laboratory experiments to support European civil engineering higher education. The main objective of the project is achieving the availability of various laboratory experiments, which are not part of standard education at each university, but are carried out at specialized institutes. The strategic partnership builds upon recent results in digital research and teaching (e.g. projects DigiLab4U, AuCity 2 and 3reCapSL). The project partners bring these results together, apply them to concrete partner-specific experiments, and then transfer the results of experiments into a digital environment, which is then made available for the general public. Especially with the 3D RealityCapture ScanLab (3reCapSL), the existing knowledge deficits in the field of real-time capable ultra-high-resolution spatial recording of dynamic scenes can be closed. The high-resolution 3D models are predestined for the creation of digital worlds and support for related creative innovations.

The elaborated datasets will enable the expansion of the educational opportunities for a broad group of structural engineering students at the partner universities and abroad (national, European and international level; high dissemination potential). Virtual Reality experiments simulate selected physical experiments that are not actually carried out during studies due to dangers or because of the effort involved, in a three-dimensional, realistic and content-correct representation. This concept is demonstrated in the PARFORCE settings by real, physical experiments, which are presented and located in a virtual environment with certain interaction possibilities.

The elaborated framework/concept will offer the opportunity to other national, European and international institution to create and share further datasets in cooperation with the partners of the strategic partnership or by themselves on the free accessible platform.