Abstract:

The association T.I.M.E. (Top International Managers for Europe) was created 20 years ago as a means to offer students mobility and to better integrate them into European culture. The organization presently joins 46 universities in Europe in a substantial student network. The organization also has a partner in both Japan and Brazil. Currently, there are more than 150 bilateral double degree agreements among T.I.M.E. members and approximately 300 students per year become T.I.M.E. students.

One of the early main objectives for the organization was to allow for a simplified student flow and Double Degrees at the Master level, and, consequently, T.I.M.E. was a forerunner of the mobility flows seen between many universities today.
The organization today also offers various other student-related intercultural initiatives. One of these is a T.I.M.E. Summer School (TESS). The objective with the course is to give the student a deeper knowledge in both technical and non-technical issues concerning sustainability and its interaction with economic issues.
The Summer School opened six years ago. The course is given during a two-week period in the summer. It offers the European perspective on these issues to students. The course gives engineering students something they usually don´t achieve and T.I.M.E. Association want them to learn new ways of education using audiovisual. During three years the subject course was on “Sustainability; Social Models, Religions and Public Affairs.” Last three year the subject has been “Sustainability and Economics”.

To accommodate a large variety of students in the TESS program, a pedagogical method was conceived for students and teachers who are located at four different universities, which are continuously connected audiovisually via the internet.
The course is planned to stimulate group discussions on such intercultural affairs. One over-arching goal of this TESS course is to identify some of the challenges that an academic collaboration organization like T.I.M.E. faces for future education, especially considering 2030, by when the computer literate and highly web-based children who are born today, will, with their expectations of “virtual 3D encounters,” reach university.
The course began on a small scale with three campuses and 21 students in 2007 and expanded to seven campuses by 2012: Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (KTH), Sweden; Ecole Supérieure d' Electricité (SUPELEC), France; Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain and BMI, Hungary, Budapesti Műszakiés Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem (BME), Hungary, Universitá degli Studi di Trento (UNITN), Italy and Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi (ITU), Turkey and Open University Sri Lanka (OUSL) with more than 70 students).

The paper gives an overview of the development and technical challenges encountered over the years in providing such a course and illustrates various questions that the students, teachers and organizers face. Also results of the evaluation of the course during all those years are presented and we can appreciate that the students have evaluated this innovative way of teaching very positively.
This innovative experience may be of interest to other education institutions looking for new challenges. The paper shows how the students evaluate the remote lectures, how the work together over university boundaries and how they appreciate the technical equipment of the course, as well as how they consider the intercultural issues given in the course.

Keywords:

International experience, sustainability, innovative education.