EXCHANGING UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS AND LECTURERS: AN INTERNATIONAL ACTION BETWEEN SPAIN AND MOROCCO FOR TEACHING ENERGY TOPICS

International cooperation in education at the start of the 21st century has come to be a critical activity for most universities. Concerning the cooperation programmes for developing countries, they focus primarily on providing continuing education and training for young academic staff and students. Nowadays many universities have promoted international cooperation for education programmes addressed to developing countries, with the objective of offering to students and staff interested an opportunity for transferring knowledge and experience to developing countries. The University of Burgos in Spain has launched, since 2012, an institutional cooperation for education programme which involves actions addressed to teachers, students and research groups. This paper presents a case study of the cooperation for education programme developed between two faculties of engineering in Spain and Morocco since 2014 to 2017, exchanging students and teachers coming from engineering degrees, and focused to energy topics. Results in terms of activities developed, participants and institutional issues are presented. The relation between research and education will be highlighted as a key factor to carry on such cooperation action. Challenges and pitfalls of the exchange of students and lecturers for learning purposes, teaching courses on engineering education innovative methods to staff and mutual benefits for future research and cooperation for education are described. The experience has produced a multiplicative factor as new opportunities for cooperation have appeared. The paper could be of interest to those readers that want to promote cooperation for engineering education