Abstract:

The CITEF (Conférence Internationale des Formation d’Ingénieurs et de Techniciens d’Expression Française) carries out mutual aid between the member establishments of its network, in order to increase the provision of professional training for all.

Thus, the objective is the “turnkey” transfer of teaching modules of a professional nature, taking into account the economic constraints of developing countries. To do this, we first carry out “Training of Trainers” which has two parts:
- upgrading trainers, particularly in a practical manner;
- our way of teaching, which results from around twenty years of experience, taking into account the evolution of the student population.

The chosen theme is “industrial computing” and in particular “Embedded Electronic (or Mechatronics) Systems” which are found for example in transport: in the automobile, aeronautics, railway and maritime industries. . The advantage is to be able to teach on low-cost consumer hardware, such as hobbyist electronic cards: Arduino, RaspberryPI or Nvidia Jetson Nano.

This action started in 2023 thanks to a “AUF Network” project consisting of 1 week of training at ENIT in Tunis. The results were 24 trained trainers from 10 establishments in 5 French-speaking countries: Tunisia, Morocco, Madagascar, Senegal, and Romania. Then it continued in 2023 and 2024 with an ADESFA (“Appui au Développement de l’Enseignement Supérieur Français en Afrique”) project (limited to African partners) consisting of two years of distance learning training, and two weeks face-to-face in Africa. The results for 2023 are 11 training modules carried out remotely and one week face-to-face at ENIT in Tunis, bringing together 17 trained trainers from 9 establishments in 5 French-speaking countries (Tunisia, Morocco, Madagascar, Senegal, and Romania).

Having observed over the past ten years that the aspirations of our apprentice public had changed, we have questioned our teaching in order to adapt to them. We teach them using a pedagogy that we call “Inductive Pour et Par Projet A Minima”. This is based on practice, “For”: upstream, in preparation for, and “By” in a more classic way “Project”, and “at a Minimum” including the necessary concepts only, seen and materialized separately, then arranged with a view to complex implementation. It is this pedagogy that we offer to the trainers we train for the teaching of transferred modules.

The eleven modules carried out this year remotely are as follows:
- Introduction to robotics.
- Introduction to ROS.
- C programming.
- Multitasking Operating System.
- Introduction to Vision.
- IoT.
- Digital Signal Processing.
- Fundamental notions of digital systems.
- Python programming.
- The basics of analog electronics for microcontroller structures.
- Wired Networks These are basic or fundamental modules.

They will be continued next year with so-called in-depth modules.

The two weeks of face-to-face training were a real success. They allowed us to get to know us and establish friendly contacts. On the other hand, remotely the results are more mixed. Two problems emerged:
- the stability of internet connections with several African countries ;
- the availability of both trained trainers and trainers throughout the year. So all our lessons are recorded. Course materials, developed source codes and videos are available on the ENIT website.

Keywords:

International cooperation in Education, Professional Development of Teachers, Teaching on low-cost electronic cards.