Abstract:

Disruptive events in the last two years require creative and interactive adaptation of educational institutions to new conditions and channels of performing one of their key activities - teaching. This is especially important for teaching courses related to innovations based on digital technologies, where challenges are related to many aspects of improvement feasibility: from identifying the problem to be solved (for whom and what is?), over designing improvements (what should be and how?), to implementing solutions and managing the change (which, when, why and how much?).

The use of classical methods and techniques, covering the longitudinal design of generic based improvement alternatives, may be valuable for teaching the most common approaches and mastering basic learning outcomes. Improving specific business processes, designing and managing customer journeys based on their preferences and enabling enterprises to digitally transform, require the use of more contemporary approaches, methods and techniques covering context-modelling for describing specific environments and cases motivating the change. As these objectives arise from specific problem domains and can vary significantly among industries and ecosystems, iterative access and open communication with enterprises in several time slots seem like a suitable teaching process improvement, commonly understood as a variant of work-based learning (WBL). Hybrid modes containing offline/on-site and online environments, due to response actions related to Covid-19 pandemic, are adding to the complexity of performing teaching processes. Despite the complexity, shorter teaching and learning cycles and use of more contemporary approaches, methods and techniques, prepares students for more practice in STEM disciplines. These demands can be addressed by internationalization and concentrated learning sessions through intensive courses, which contribute to acquiring interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary skills and knowledge.

This paper presents experiences of applying WBL and international intensive courses in teaching digital technology related courses and illustrates how this approach was implemented in real cases. The gathered experience emphasizes first the need of including industry partners and enterprises into teaching and learning processes in order to better understand real and not perceived problems occurring in the real sector as well as to design feasible improvements. Second, intensive or concentrated teaching sessions in international environments proved to be an effective adaption feasible to perform between Covid-19-challenged cycles. Finally, some lessons learned are also presented in order to demonstrate the benefits of WBL and intensive courses in teaching processes in Higher Education Institutions.

Keywords:

Work-based learning, intensive courses, teaching process, higher education.