Abstract:

The master of Renewable Energy in the Marine Environment (REM) is an Erasmus Mundus program funded by the European Union that has had its first edition during the 2018-2019 course. Erasmus Mundus Masters are organized by a set of partner institutions –typically universities- from different countries of the European Union. The REM leader is the University of the Basque Country in Spain. Students come from all over the world and are selected under very competitive and strict conditions based on their previous academic performance. Once they have been selected they can follow two academic tracks and spend one semester at each of the countries corresponding to the different partners of the consortium: Spain, UK (Scotland), Norway and France.

The focus of this master is the oceans, considered as a source of renewable energy. Offshore wind and waves -along with other renewables- will play an important role at helping the European Union (EU) meet its environmental goals. These developments will also contribute to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. Recently, the Commission's Blue Growth Strategy identified the ocean energy sector as one of the emerging areas in the blue economy.

This rapid development requires highly qualified staff for the companies and institutions inspiring and driving the transition to a climate-friendly economy. In this context, a master like REM plays an important role at providing high-level academic contents while closely interacting with the private sector in different cutting-edge technological challenges.

In this work, an educational experience corresponding to one subject in the REM Erasmus Mundus Master is shown. This subject is called Ocean wave energy and offshore wind energy assessment, has 4.5 ECTS, belongs to the first module of REM called Resource and marine environment and is connected with a follow-up subject in Nantes (France). It deals with ocean waves and offshore wind which are analyzed as geophysical fluids holding an energetic potential.

The objectives are to provide students with:
1. The theoretical knowledge on Fluid Mechanics and Physics to understand the behaviour of wind and ocean waves as
geophysical fluids in nature
2. The capability of evaluating ocean waves potential in any region
3. The capability of evaluating offshore wind potential in any region
4. An introductory knowledge of the state-of-the-art models(WRF, SWAN).

The focus of the subject is practical, under the Project Based Learning approach. The four teachers of the subject belong to the EOLO research group www.ehu.es/eolo with a lengthy experience in offshore wind and waves studies. In the classroom, after a short theoretical introduction, real-world exercises connected to the scientific activities of EOLO are proposed to students which must be solved using different types of open-source software like Octave and R.

The educational experience in this first edition, encourages us to follow this path in next editions since all the educational objectives have been met. Students have reached to understand a scientific description of reanalyses, wind and ocean waves and evaluate the energetic potential of ocean waves and offshore wind.

The conclusion is that the practical focus of the subject based on real-world, hands-on exercises proposed in the classroom, has proven to be highly succesful for students coming from all over the world and with many different backgrounds.

Keywords:

Erasmus Mundus, Project Based Learning, ocean energy, offshore wind energy.