Abstract:

Due to continuous change and diversification of modern society many traditional job positions and working operation functions is either disappearing or vastly changing in nature. The recent studies on employee’s flexibility are showing that the amount of career-ready employees with the required competences, who are also motivated, is rising. In many operational work positions in modern manufacturing companies, employees must manage a wider range of issues and responsibilities than before. Engineering education has been and will continue to be vital in everyday life of people around the real world, but students must have competences in development of creativity, flexibility and activity, to keep up with the speed of innovations. The main aims of the paper are focused on setting up flexible educational environment, integration of learning content and support of effective transfer of knowledge into the actual environment of the European working market challenges. The article responds to the outputs of the National Project "Key Competences Formation and Effective Support of Students Mobility at Technology Faculties" in the context of the work and use of technology knowledge and didactics. It is also in the intention of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Zilina, Slovakia, through the knowledge obtained from the project research to offer each interested educational institutions an opportunity to adopt virtual education environment concept to support students creativity, flexibility and activity concept (CFAC) in order to focus better on improving student´s learning procedure and increasing the quality of instruction procedure. The paper brings the results of the current national educational agency research project focused on effectiveness of modular didactic cycle with new virtual technologies, methods and forms in student-focused concept through the processing of experimental data of the electronics study program from the period of 2017-2018. Based on the framework, a set of virtual tools and supports that allow this flexible education process to run smoothly, were implemented. This contribution discusses the findings and experiences gained from the new virtual education environment model which was piloted with a multinational company that is a producer of automated equipment and virtual instrumentation software. The implementation of a new CFAC has proven an effective flexible learning environment to work well as a method for elevating key career-ready competences. The main benefit of the paper is the new virtual instrumentation based concept of engineering students’ career-ready knowledge scaffold with significant findings and recommendations. The innovative concept is based on standardized automated equipment and virtual instrumentation software with the new assessment to identify and reflect on the students´ competences outcomes of learning experiences during modular didactic cycle to examine the flexible environment helpfulness of virtual instrumentation based learning and to explore how the concept enhances career-ready competences. Finally, the article brings a summary of the benefits and a proposal to expand the areas of utilization of project findings in wide educational applications and to form forecasts to improve the key competences of students of technical faculties through innovative virtual educational environment support.

Keywords:

Virtual education environment, virtual instrumentation, creativity, flexibility, activity, key competences, higher education didactics.