O1 Report gives an overview about the development trends in the mechatronics sector and type of competences (also new, key competences) that are needed in the sector today and in the near future and main bottlenecks in teaching. Existing studies of the field were analysed, generalizations of the researches, analysis of global developments and trends, differences between participating countries were done, experts of the field were questioned and focus-group interviews were carried out. For interviewing, the questionnaire was compiled. Interviews were conducted with company representatives, teachers and alumni in all participating countries.
Intellectual output O2 Report Part II “Smart teaching Conclusion”
In O2 it was analysed new teaching methods and their effectiveness for use andrespective methodology was composed. The aim of using new teaching methods is to make difficult and complicated topics and subjects of teaching more easily understandable. Different didactic methods of organizing teaching process were analysed, incl. what they are and how to implement them in teaching process. The educational institutions have shared their experiences about the practical use of these.
Under O3 every participating school developed lecture materials and gave at least one pilot lecture using some of the novel teaching materials. IMECC and KTK contributed to composing the materials. Pilot lectures were carried out in participating education institutions. Nowadays information society is characterised by a big amount of information that is continuously increasing and is not easy to manage it. The students themselves have also changed – IT technologies, social media instruments, etc. are very familiar to them. To have a „picture” instead of having a typical lecture is more convenient to them. It is necessary to use these novel methods in practice. All planned activities (composing lecture materials, making pilot lectures in participating schools, gathering feedback and analysing it) were carried out. Important was also sharing knowledge between schools participating in the project and involving other teachers from the schools. Preparing the lecture material was iterative process. The first versions were not the final ones. After preparing the lecture, it was discussed with other persons of the schools and other project partners, improvement suggestions were made and then corrections and improvements were done to lecture materials.
The participants of the project learned much during the process of composing lecture materials. It turned out that it is complicated and turns even more complicated if smart learning principles and novel teaching methods are employed. Elaboration of smart lecture presumes knowledge about methodology and methods, skills of using multimedia and integrating IT solutions to preparing lecture materials. Essential problems appeared:
- Very many teachers are not able to prepare high level lecture materials using novel teaching methods, multimedia and IT
- Preparing smart lecture takes much time and also financial resources.
One possibility would be to develop cloud-based data-bank of teaching materials that would be accessible to all teachers of vocational education schools in certain field. At the same time, actuality of the lecture materials should be ensured as well as continual overviewing, actualisation and improvement of the materials because in technical fields the changes took place quickly and otherwise the materials are not up to date.
Intellectual output O5 report “Cooperation between networks, action plan”
In O5 it was analysed how to realize effectively, consistently and sustainably previously described activities in cooperation network, how in integrated way would be possible to obtain better results with limited resources and how would be possible to expand the network to other institutions. Cooperation network would have an ability to develop continuously a value-added cooperation between countries and educational and supporting institutions in different countries (at the moment between project partners). General objectives of the cooperation network:
– Share activities–cooperation for better achievements
– Share knowledge, information–cooperation for increasing competitiveness
– Share objectives, tasks–achieving larger professionalism with fewer costs and shorter time.
A Report was composed.
Intellectual output O6
For smooth project realization and dissemination project homepage (O6) was created. For exchanging documents between partners a web-based document exchange environment was implemented and used. Additionally secret Facebook group was created for changing information between partners (not initially planned).
Intellectual output O7 report “Project NEDIA dissemination plan”
For disseminating the project results dissemination plan (O7) was composed. Project partners plan continuing collaboration for development of training process in the future and also involve new partners. For example, some new projects, sharing information, exchange of students, seminars etc. have planned also after the end of the project and some of them are already realised.