Abstract:

The increasing importance of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) encourages universities worldwide to organize up-to-date CPS oriented educational programs. The Erasmus+ project “CybPhys” aims to support CPS oriented industry-focused programs in Belarus and Ukraine. To exchange knowledge and experience when teaching CPS between the European Union partners (Riga Technical University in Latvia, KULeuven in Belgium and University of Cyprus) and the Belarusian and Ukrainian partners, a range of activities have already been organized. The present paper discusses on the one hand a teacher training focusing on educational and technical skills and on the other hand an English language course both organized by KULeuven.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the teacher training had to be virtualised and relied on the MS Teams environment i.e. in September 2021 synchronous computer-mediated communication was used during the two-day programme. Good practices concerning the use of digital platforms, integration of students in the pedagogical process, preparation of students for the labour market, use of academic literature, use of ICT-based technological solutions to teach in a multi-campus context and realization of pedagogical interuniversity collaboration have been shared and discussed. Additionally, two technical topics relevant when designing reliable CPS have been discussed. More precisely, the importance and recent evolutions when dealing with ElectroMagnetic Compatibility and the development of an electric car were discussed.

English often serves as a lingua franca in the academic world implying the need for a decent English language course. The trainees need to apply English in a professional, academic, technical and engineering oriented context. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a computer-mediated communication based English language course was organized in January, February and March 2021. Thanks to the vaccination campaigns in Belgium and Ukraine, a full-week face-to-face English language course for Ukrainian teaching staff members (from Kryvyi Rih National University, Kharkiv National Automobile and Highway University and Chernihiv Polytechnic National University) was organized in Belgium in September 2021. The English language course mainly focused on listening and speaking English in an academic context. Special attention went to features of spoken English and avoiding common errors. Vocabulary and grammar have been studied focusing on presenting and lecturing in an academic context.

The present paper discusses the main goals and practical realizations of the teacher training and English language course both organized by KULeuven. The overall satisfaction of the trainees of both initiatives was high.

Keywords:

Engineering education, Cyber-Physical Systems, teacher training, English language course, virtualised course, face-to-face course.