Abstract:

New international requirements, intense competition to attract students and academic excellence have led to a significant increase in the importance of quality assurance in higher education. The reality shows that practical training in companies can be a critical variable in the success or failure of subsequent employment of graduates. Many companies are interested in implementing an integrated system in the Faculty of Engineering from “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, Romania to ensure that the training provided in their fields of practice is not a singular, theoretical activity, but a comprehensive training system incorporating real world, practical experiences.
The Faculty of Engineering should establish new policies and objectives with a view of encouraging practical experience in their teaching curriculum and for continuous improvement of existing training programmes. Thus, these policies must include principles and objectives that create the framework for the implementation of such additions. In the first part of the paper, the most important principles and objectives have been identified in order to create the framework for the implementation of practical training activities that could be of interest to companies looking to recruit. In accordance with the principles of project management several sub-activities have been established for the main stages.
In the second part of the paper we present a research conducted in the second semester of the academic year 2019-2020, when the companies discontinued their practical trainings on the premises due to COVID-19 crisis. We considered that the measures taken at faculty level for carrying out online activities within the practice discipline are meant to work only in this semester, in the short term, and that another practice system must be developed. Therefore, the purpose of our exploratory research was to discover what main objectives must be pursued by an integrated system addressed at creating a practical applications curriculum, which meets both the training needs of students and the needs of employers in companies in crisis situations. The COVID-19 crisis has caused a decline in demand for labour, including for experts. The internship contracts of many students at the Faculty of Engineering have been terminated.
We started by conducting a survey based on online questionnaires among students at the end of their second, third, or fourth year of study. In parallel, company representatives and internships coordinating teachers were interviewed by phone or WhatsApp. Among the main objectives that the new practice system should pursue, in the opinion of the respondents, we mention: 1- raising the awareness of managers about the need to invest more time, effort and resources in future engineers; 2 – motivating teachers to get involved in internship programs; 3 - safer working conditions for students in companies during the COVID-19 crisis, in parallel with the involvement of students in voluntary activities within these companies. Designing an Online Practical Experience platform for employers, students and teachers, to stimulate competition, and finding ways to combine simulated online activities with practical working activities in specially designed places in companies, are also possible objectives that have generated a high level of interests among respondents.

Keywords:

Practice, training, companies, integrated system.