Young engineering students from Austria, Finland, Czech, Germany and Slovakia have participated in a laboratory course managed by universities in six European countries (Switzerland, too). I have been analyzing the results of student questionnaires. Pedagogical principles are my focus and my inquiry tells only about them. I do not understand anything about routing which was the main subject in labs.
I have answers from 99 university students (only five female). Main results seem very good. Students consider practical work, problem solving, group work and discory learning most important methods of their learning. Students were very well informed about the course and they were motivated, even enthusiastic to participate. Guidance during the course was given by their own teacher or fellow students in the same university. Learning environment, manuals and guidelines and instructions helped, this is obvious and normal in labs, I suppose. Some technical problems are also normal phenomena, I suppose.
Students assessed themselves to be good listeners, good at task solving, reasoning and explaining. Sometimes they gave advices to fellow students. Other students were described as team work facilitators, knowledge builders and team cohesion builders. Only few were over-riders or lurkers or passive in group working. So they are normal and fine European nerds, aren’t they?
Transnational cooperation happened to some extent. Actually all the project was it, but concrete interaction between students was seen in two universities that I could examine more.
I am wondering what are the possibilities to use different pedagogical methods in remote laboratories environment? Participants have seen that quite similar ideas existed at the partner universities- only implemented in a slightly different way. In the beginning of the project they had sat together and created a common concept. And now I can see the results.
The pedagogical framework is an important part of the Edinet project. Edinet will create International Semi Virtual campus, which is more complex task comparing to already existing solutions. The most interesting part will be the part regarding Learning in Edinet – Practical suggestions.
Edinet project has workpackages about competencies and so on … pedagogy is only one package. Perhaps we have to collaborate inside the project in order to plan and recommend practical solutions for future. My results from student inquiry seem very appropriate in this phase.
Partners have a meeting in Bremen in June – I would be happy about comments.
