Lisbon, 1-12 August 2018
BEST Symposium on Education 2018 Lisbon
“Ready, STEM, Go!”
Saša Stojanović
Authors Lucija Boras
(University of Belgrade, Serbia)
(University of Zagreb, Croatia)
Fabian Berreth
Teodora Trajkova
(Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
(Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia)
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Table of contents Preface
6
Acknowledgements
6
More information
9
Introduction
10
Board of European Students of Technology
10
BEST Symposia on Education
10
Academical partners of BSE Lisbon
11
Content team of BSE Lisbon
12
Participants of BSE Lisbon
13
Methodology
14
Sessions
15
1. Skills needed in STEM professions
17
1.1. Are pedagogical skills helpful in STEM careers?
17
1.2. Soft Skills - are they needed in STEM education?
20
1.3. What does it take to practise a STEM profession Hard vs. Soft Skills
23
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1.4. Skills needed in Industry 4.0
28
1.5. Self-employment skills - what are they, and how can STEM students gain them?
34
1.6. Professional Roles and Employability of Future Engineers (PREFER)
41
2. Pedagogy in STEM education
44
2.1. Active Learning and its role in Higher Education
44
2.2. What are the best questions to ask in classes?
51
2.3. Fun and Joy of Researching and Ruminating
54
2.4. How much internship is too much internship?
59
2.5. Is continuous learning a key for better education?
62
2.6. How satisfied are you with your University and the knowledge you are getting?
67
3. Diversity in STEM Education
81
3.1. Introduction to diversity in STEM Education
81
3.2. Gender Diversity in STEM fields
83
3.3. Problems of students with disabilities - is there discrimination from the perspective of their peers, professors and Universities?
86
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3.4. Diversity in personality types and learning styles are professors inclusive in their lectures?
90
3.5. Socioeconomic diversity - does it influence Higher Education and are students who work in parallel to their studies regulated in the STEM field?
97
3.6. What do YOU want in future Universities?
100
4. Conclusion
104
5. Appendix
105
A.1.1. Are pedagogical skills helpful in STEM careers?
105
A.1.2. Soft Skills - are they needed in STEM education?
108
A.1.4. Skills needed in Industry 4.0
119
A.1.5. Self-employment skills - what are they, and how can STEM students gain them?
122
A.2.1. Active Learning and its role in Higher Education
126
A.2.2. What are the best questions to ask in classes?
127
A.2.6. How satisfied are you with your University and the knowledge you are getting? A.3.1. Diversity in STEM Education
128
A.3.2. Gender Diversity in STEM fields
130
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A.3.3. Diversity in personality types and learning styles - are professors inclusive in their lectures?
131
A.3.5. Socioeconomic diversity - does it influence Higher Education and are students who work in parallel to their studies regulated in the STEM field?
133
6. Literature
139
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Preface Acknowledgements Best Symposium on Education (BSE) “Ready, STEM, Go!” took place from the 1st until the 12th of August 2018. Several contributions made the event possible, to whom the writers of this report would like to pay a special acknowledgement.
Local BEST Group Lisbon A very special “thank you” to all members of the Local BEST Group (LBG) Lisbon who organised BSE Lisbon with the support of the Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon. The writers would like to express a personal acknowledgement to Francisco Viana, the Main Organiser, and Maísa Seidi, the Academic Responsible, who worked throughout the whole process of preparations and helped in developing the content. Additionally, we recognise the effort and support of the organising Core Team and the Board of LBG Lisbon.
President of LBG Lisbon 2017-2018:
President of LBG Lisbon 2018-2019:
João Peixoto
João Francisco Andrade
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Main Organiser:
Academic Responsible:
Secretary:
Francisco Viana
Laisa Craveiro
Carina Fernandes
Logistics Responsible:
Participants Responsible:
Social Responsible:
Ana Marta Costa
Beatriz Arzeni
Vladlen Galetsky
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Educational Involvement Department of BEST BSE Lisbon is a project initiated and conducted by the Educational Involvement Department of BEST. Through the Educational Involvement Department, BEST strives to make students’ ideas on what can be changed in their universities, study programs and curricula, heard. The writers would like to express their gratitude to all the people involved in the Educational Involvement Department.
Educational Involvement Department Coordinator 2017-2018:
Educational Involvement Department Coordinator 2018-2019:
Hanija Bujas
João Moita
BSE Adviser 2017-2018:
BSE Adviser 2017-2018:
Adrià Balcázar
Adrien Merlier
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More information Homepage of BEST/Educational Involvement: www.best.eu.org/educationalInvolvement Homepage of Local BEST Group Lisbon: https://best.tecnico.ulisboa.pt/ Homepage of IST: https://tecnico.ulisboa.pt/en/
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Introduction Board of European Students of Technology Board of European Students of Technology (BEST) is a constantly growing nonrepresentative, non-political and non-profit voluntary student organisation whose mission is to develop students. One of the core activities of BEST is the organisation of BEST Courses, which aims to supplement the skills and outlook of European students of technology. Since the founding of BEST in 1989, more activities have been adapted to its vision of empowering diversity, counting European BEST Engineering Competition (EBEC), BEST Career Day (BCD) and the BEST Symposia on Education (BSE). A special unit of BEST is dedicated to connect students of technology on contemporary educational topics in engineering education. Through the Educational Involvement Department, BEST strives to listen to the students’ ideas on what can be changed in their universities, study programmes and curricula. BEST is eager to be in close collaboration with the stakeholders of higher education, letting them know about innovative solutions coming from the main receivers of education: students. BEST is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and cooperates with a number of corporate, career support, project and university partners to provide its services.
BEST Symposia on Education BEST Symposia on Education (BSE) were created to involve students in the process of educational improvement and raise their awareness about the possibility of students being involved in their education. Together with the other stakeholders involved directly or indirectly in educational matters, students discuss a variety of education-related topics. BEST counts on both participants of the event and stakeholders to provide insights in current educational matters in a most active way, in order to influence changes in education across Europe.
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In BEST Symposia on Education, participants are given the opportunity to express their thoughts on educational matters, which are then being presented in the events’ final reports. Reports are used as a resource for writing papers on particular topics, typically submitted and presented in scientific conferences dealing with Higher Educational matters, thus making students’ voices heard.
Purpose of BSE Lisbon The purposes of the BEST Symposium on Education 2018 Lisbon were the following: • Raising students’ awareness of education-related matters, and gathering input from tertiary-level students of STEM fields on various subjects regarding STEM education; • Participants, individually, had the opportunity to practice and develop multiple soft skills such as presentation skills, interpersonal and communication skills, as well as to improve international interdisciplinary cooperation and teamwork.
Academical partners of BSE Lisbon BEST acknowledges the great privilege of cooperating with experts on educational topics as academic partners of BSE Lisbon. The expertise of partners contributed to the relevance of the discussions and gave insight into the perspectives of the academic and industrial worlds. The experts contributed to the creation of the sessions during which their perspectives were fused with the opinions of the participating students. BEST would like to pay special respect to the partners, who contributed to raising awareness of educational matters among students and shared their research and expertise.
Sofia Sá
MSc in Educational Psychology; Pedagogical Trainer for Teachers Freelancer
Rebecca Broadbent
MSc in Mechanical Engineering; Career Researcher Aston University
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Alfredo Soeiro
PhD in Civil Engineering, Associate professor University of Porto, Department of Civil Engineering
Greet Langie
PhD in Physics; Assistant Professor University of Leuven, Leuven Engineering and Science Education Center
Angela Fรถsel
PhD in Physics; Academic Director University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Content team of BSE Lisbon Alongside the experts on education, a content team of BEST members designed the sessions of BSE Lisbon. Their contact information is shown below.
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BSE Coordinator Saťa Stojanović
email: sasa.stojanovic@BEST.eu.org BSE Facilitators
Fabian Berreth
email: fabian.berreth@BEST.eu.org
Lucija Boras
email: lucija.boras@BEST.eu.org
Teodora Trajkova
email: teodora.trajkova@BEST.eu.org
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Participants of BSE Lisbon A total of 21 students of technology were engaged in the sessions of BSE Lisbon. Their personal data is shown in Table 1. Table 1. List of participants’ details; university and nationality
University
Nationality
Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University Technical University of Madrid Budapest University of Technology and Economics University of Novi Sad National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” University of Belgrade Budapest University of Technology and Economics Czech Technical University in Prague Chalmers University of Technology Technical University of Denmark Riga Technical University University of Lisbon University of Porto Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University Graz University of Technology Polytechnic University of Valencia Technical University of Madrid Carlos III University of Madrid National Technical University of Athens University of Zagreb Technical University of Denmark
Lithuania Spain Hungary Serbia Ukraine Serbia Hungary Czech Republic Lebanon Sweden Latvia Portugal Portugal Russia Bosnia and Herzegovina Spain Spain Spain Greece Croatia Denmark
Methodology A number of facilitation methods were used the during sessions. Below you can find a general description of the ones which were most commonly used.
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Discussion groups A discussion group is an interactive oral process in which a group of people is given a topic or a situation and after thinking about it for a few minutes, they discuss their points of view with each other. The opinions and ideas are expressed in a systematic way.
World Café World Café methodology is a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogues. Participants are divided into groups, each starting from a different spot or table. Each table has a specific topic which is being discussed. Discussions are recorded and after the allocated time, groups change tables. After moving to the new table, groups familiarize themselves with what was previously discussed there, after which the new group adds their ideas. This process is repeated until all the groups have been to all the tables. Finally, the ideas from each table are presented to all the participants.
Brainstorming Brainstorming is a structured process which encourages the generation of a large number of ideas in a group setting. All ideas are recorded, and no judgments or evaluations are made. It is perhaps the most popular technique used in groups to expand the thinking process. Brainstorming works on the premise that even crazy and “wild” ideas should be listed, as they may spark new and practical ideas that would otherwise not have surfaced. Participants of the brainstorming session are encouraged to contribute any ideas and to build upon others’ ideas.
SWOT analysis A SWOT analysis is a process which identifies the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organisation, situation or a plan. Specifically, SWOT is a basic, analytical framework that assesses what an organisation/situation/plan can and cannot do, as well as its potential opportunities and threats. A SWOT analysis takes information from an environmental analysis and separates it into internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats.
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SMART goals and actions SMART is an acronym for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. It is used to define specific actions or goals and have them defined based on the respective criteria. Before defining actions and/or goals, the team agrees on what they want their project to look like, and therefore, it is essential to firstly discuss and create the general outline of the project, and then afterwards start defining the actions and goals.
Sessions
BEST Symposium of Education 2018 Lisbon had three main topics, and each of them was developed through six complementary sessions lasting 90 minutes, during which students’ opinions were gathered by the Content team and Collaborators of the Symposium. The sessions were as follows: 1. Skills needed in STEM professions 1. 1. 1. 2. 1. 3. 1. 4. 1. 5. 1. 6.
Are pedagogical skills helpful in STEM careers? Soft Skills - are they needed in STEM education? What does it take to practise a STEM profession - Hard vs. Soft Skills Skills needed in Industry 4.0 Self-employment skills - what are they, and how can STEM students gain them? Professional Roles and Employability of Future Engineers (PREFER)
2. Pedagogy in STEM education 1. 1. 1. 2. 1. 3. 1. 4. 1. 5. 1. 6.
Active Learning and its role in Higher Education What are the best questions to ask in classes? Fun and Joy of Researching and Ruminating How much internship is too much internship? Is continuous learning a key for better education? How satisfied are you with your University and the knowledge you are getting?
3. Diversity in STEM education 1. 1. 1. 2. 1. 3.
Introduction to diversity in STEM Education Gender Diversity in STEM fields Problems of students with disabilities - is there discrimination from the perspective of their peers, professors and Universities?
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1. 4. 1. 5. 1. 6.
Diversity in personality types and learning styles - are professors inclusive in their lectures? Socioeconomic diversity - does it influence Higher Education and are students who work in parallel to their studies regulated in the STEM field? What do YOU want in future Universities?
Each of the sessions is reported in the following structure: • Background; • Methodology; • Outcomes. The data presented in the outcomes of each of the sessions includes only the main outcomes related to the goal of each session. Other data which was gathered can be found in the Appendix, for any future analysis of the outcomes.
1.Skills needed in STEM professions 1.1. Are pedagogical skills helpful in STEM careers? Background One of the problems that crossed our research for STEM education and future careers in Europe was the transfer of knowledge, both by the professors to their students as well as from one employee to another. We wanted to examine the following questions: 1. Are soft and hard skills enough to transferring knowledge in STEM education and future careers? 2. Is there another type of skills needed for better teaching and knowledge transfer? In this session, we wanted to examine whether students are familiar with pedagogical skills, how important students find these skills to be, and which skills students find the most important.
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Methodology The session started with group work. The participants were divided into two random groups of similar size and got the task to assemble an origami bird. The first group got the instructions, as well as a mentor who was helping them and encouraging them to ask questions and work as a team to assemble the bird. The second group only got the instructions and were assigned with a mentor whose role was to not be of help with the students’ questions. Following that, there was a group discussion about the outcomes of the group work and a presentation on pedagogical skills. During the introductory presentation, we wanted to examine participants’ opinions on their definition of pedagogical and soft skills. The next part of the session was group work. The participants were divided into three groups consisting of seven students and were asked to create a list of pedagogical skills. Then all the skills were assembled into one list of pedagogical skills.
Outcomes When assembling the origami bird, both groups managed to finish their tasks, but the second group had more difficulties. Their conclusion was that if they would have had better knowledge management, it would have been easier to do the task. Since their mentor was not encouraging them in the process, they weren’t sure that, as a group, they would be able to finish their origami, so they decided to do it individually. The first group did not experience those difficulties since their mentor guided them through the process. The conclusion was that having a mentor can be helpful and motivating. That conclusion was connected to situations in their universities and future jobs. The students who have proper mentoring and/or teachers willing to help are more likely to finish their tasks more easily than students who don’t get any help. On the other hand, participants pointed out that this may depend on the situation because sometimes working alone without help can lead to better motivation and persistence. In the next part of the session, pedagogical skills were defined by participants as “the ability to teach people”. If one person possesses some knowledge and wants to pass it onto another person or a group of people, it is helpful to have the ability to do so in the most constructive and useful way. Students concluded that these skills would also be useful to pass their knowledge onto colleagues in their future workplace, to deal with unknown
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situations when working in groups, as well as to improve their communication. Students agreed that pedagogical skills are going to be important in their future careers because it is important to know how to express oneself. The other type of skills which lead to one’s development are soft skills. Receiving feedback is one of the examples, as students pointed out because it’s also important for the teacher to want to get the feedback from a student. Soft skills are defined by as “desirable qualities that do not depend on acquired knowledge: they include common sense, the ability to deal with people, and a positive flexible attitude”1. Examples of soft skills that students provided were: Communication, Feedback, Conflict management, Public speaking and Time management. The opinion of the participants on whether pedagogical skills are also soft skills was that they are a mixture, and in order for a person to be successful, he/she should possess both types of skills. An additional conclusion was that not all soft skills are necessarily pedagogical skills. The final list of the pedagogical skills created by students can be found in the Appendix under Table A1. The main conclusion is that students find most of the skills significant. There are no skills which students find irrelevant to have. Amongst the most significant ones are: • Presentation Skills, • Communication Skills, • Teamwork, • Emotional Awareness, • Technological knowledge, • the big picture inside and outside the classroom. Other skills which are valuable to possess, but are not necessary before the start of a professional career, are: • Conflict Management, • Stress Management, • Creative Thinking, • Improvisation, • Fast Reaction, • Credibility and • Engagement.
“Soft skills”, Collins English Dictionary, accessed December 5, 2018, http://www.dictionary.com/browse/soft-skills
1
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1.2. Soft Skills - are they needed in STEM education? Background During the previous years on several BEST Symposia on Education (previously called Events on Education), students’ opinions were gathered regarding the importance of soft skills, and which kinds of soft skills are considered the most important ones. The outcomes were that soft skills are essential for all types of STEM profession nowadays. According to the participants of Event on Education (EoE) 2017 Porto2, the most important Soft Skills are Communication and Presentation skills, Project Management and Teamwork, Time Management, Creativity and Creative Thinking. It was also discussed how these could be implemented in universities. During EoE 2017 Rome Tor Vergata3 different soft skills were analysed again with a focus on possible future implementation. This session was conducted in collaboration with Sofia Sá who introduced a study conducted by Google. According to The Washington Post, the Google study was conducted in 2013 and aimed to find out “the most important qualities of its top-performing employees in STEM fields”4. This focused on the aspects of hiring, firing and promotion data. Seven out of eight of these are soft skills and only the last one on this list is a hard skill. The outcomes where that the most important soft skills are: • being a good coach, • communicating and listening well, • possessing insights into others (including other people’s different values and points of view), • empathy towards and being supportive of one’s colleagues, • being a good critical thinker and problem solver, • being able to make connections across complex ideas. V. Kalfa, M. Avau, J. Camacho and T. Kuretoska, Education: Be the part of the next generation (Board of European Students of Technology, 2017): https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/eoe_porto_2017, page 48 3 A.B. Castell, C. Gouvatsou, I. Stojanovska and M.O. Balaban, Skills and challenges of next generations on education and teaching methods (Board of European Students of Technology, 2017): https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/eoe_rome_tv_2017_report, page 11 4 “The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students”, The Washington Post, accessed August 1, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/12/20/the-surprising-thing-googlelearned-about-its-employees-and-what-it-means-for-todays-students/ 2
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Many relevant soft skills can, therefore, be summarised in the category of Communication. It includes Teamwork, Leadership/Coordination, Mentoring/Coaching, Customer relationship, Self-motivation/perseverance.
Methodology The session started with a comparison of Generic versus Specific, as well as Hard versus Soft Skills, with a focus on their crossmatch (Generic Hard Skills, Generic Soft Skills, Specific Hard Skills, Specific Soft Skills). After that, there was a presentation about the Google study, which was succeeded by working on the following topics in pairs with a rotational system, so in the end, every participant had given input on each of the six Soft Skills which we focused on during the session (Communication, Teamwork, Leadership/Coordination, Mentoring/Coaching, Customer relationship, Self-motivation/Perseverance). In each of the rounds, they had different tasks on what to focus on, concerning the soft skill that they were working on. • Round 1 - What are the most important communication skills for the success of this soft skill? (at least 3) • Round 2 - How can teachers help master these communication skills in the classroom? • Round 3 - How can students master these skills outside the classroom? • Round 4 - What are the results, professionally, of having these skills developed and/or the consequences of not developing them? • Round 5 - Conclusions and preparation of presentations. Each station was worked upon in pairs and every station was represented twice due to the amount of participants. Afterwards, the participants presented their outcomes to each other to conclude the session. To conclude this session, the participants filled in a questionnaire via Google forms, to build upon what was already collected in the previous part.
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Outcomes The data gathered from each of the stations can be found in the Appendix in Table A2. Most of the students (14 out of 22) strongly agree with the statement that communication skills are important in STEM. Furthermore, during the group work, the participants came to the conclusion that there is a lack of, and potential for, professors and universities to support the development of communication skills, and that there are specific actions which can be undertaken for each of the individual skills. We wanted to investigate whether students have experienced formal and deliberate development of communication skills in the curriculum. The data was gathered from the quantity of opportunities students have had in the past, as well as means of getting these experiences, and it can be found in the Appendix in Table A3. When asked how they developed communication skills through their formal education, the most prominent responses were: • Giving presentations (7/17 responses), • By having subjects in the curriculum about communication (4/17 responses), • Teamwork during projects (2/17 responses), • Through oral exams (1/17 responses). When asked to assess their own need to developing their levels of different soft skills, the skills which the biggest percentage of students stated they “need to improve a lot” were Mentoring/Coaching and Self-motivation/perseverance, for the skills which they stated they “need to improve” this implied to Leadership/Coordination, and for the category “need to improve slightly” it was Teamwork. We note that not for one of the categories of soft skills did students in their majority stated that there’s “no need to improve at all”. Data which was gathered can be found in the Appendix in Table A4. Data regarding the Students’ opinions on the needs for improvement of specific communication skills can be found in Table A5 in the Appendix.
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1.3. What does it take to practise a STEM profession - Hard vs. Soft Skills Background While the majority of the University curricula in STEM fields are based on gaining hard skills closely connected to a future profession, many successful people say their improvement and success is not only based on knowledge, but also on the ability to communicate with people and present their ideas. In previous sessions, a working group came to the conclusion that improving soft skills is necessary to develop professionally. The purpose of this session was to compare advantages and disadvantages of focusing solely on one group of skills. “Hard skills are part of the skill set that is required for a job. They include the expertise necessary for an individual to successfully do the job. They are job-specific and are typically listed in job postings and job descriptions. Hard skills are acquired through formal education and training programs, including college, apprenticeships, short-term training classes, online courses, certification programs, as well as by on-the-job training.�5 On the other hand, soft skills are harder to quantify and more rarely formally taught in schools. They usually involve emotional intelligence and empathy, which makes them situation-specific and more complicated to impart to a student. As soft skills were already discussed in previous sessions, participants had a good base for comparison of these groups of skills.
The Hard Skills Employers Seek, The balance careers, accessed March 25, 2019, https://www.thebalancecareers.com/what-are-hard-skills-2060829, 5
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Methodology As an introduction to a discussion and SWOT analysis, every participant had to think about the most important hard skill in their field of study as well as the soft skill that they think they should focus on for professional improvement. Participants were asked to divide themselves into groups according to their personal opinions on whether their Hard Skills are more developed than their Soft Skills and vice versa. The main methodology used in this session was a SWOT analysis, which was created for three different scenarios. One group analyzed strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of a person with dominant Soft Skills, but a low level of required Hard Skills. The second group analyzed the opposite - a person with dominant Hard Skills over Soft Skills. The third group analyzed the situation of possession of both Hard and Soft Skills in an almost equal amount. Groups had 15 minutes for the analysis, after which the results were presented.
Outcomes Firstly, after the participants were asked to divide themselves into groups according to their personal preference on the dominance of hard and soft skills, the results show that: • 4 of the 21 participants believed they have soft skills more dominant than hard skills and that this will be their main argument when applying for a future job, • 4 of the 21 participants believed their hard skills are more dominant than their soft skills, and • 13 participants were defined their skills as equally dominant with preferences in improving both.
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Figure 1. Distribution of participants’ preference for the dominance of hard and soft skills
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Table 2. SWOT analysis for STEM students with dominant soft skills
INTERNAL
EXTERNAL
STRENGHTS
WEAKNESSES
• More likely to position themselves better at job interviews • Able to communicate their vision • More likely to fit in the company atmosphere quickly and effectively • Have good organisational behaviour and the ability of strategic planning • Understand other people’s emotions • Possess skills that usually make them natural leaders • Able to align bigger groups of people and build a community of diverse people • Able to adjust to a big variety of jobs, which makes them more employable • Are community builders • Make good first impressions
• Tend to have a lower level of technical comprehension, which can lead to them being less effective at work • If they don’t work on their knowledge constantly, it may lead to a lower ability to communicate their technical requirements for the job
OPPORTUNITIES
THREATS
• Can easily lose credibility if they don’t have the required knowledge
The concluusion was made that people with dominant Soft Skill may not be suitable for technical jobs.
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Table 3. SWOT analysis for STEM students with dominant hard skills
STRENGHTS
WEAKNESSES
• Are often experts in their respective field • Good at working alone • Tend to have a good reputation among University professors • Tend to be fast learners
• Working in a team can pose a problem, which is usually required in most companies • Tend to have undeveloped soft skills such as communication, presentation and flexibility • May experience problems when switching fields or adapting to new things
• More likely to work as freelancers and enjoy those advantages • Likely to position themselves well at job interviews
• Tend to have problems when working in a team • Less likely to be an entrepreneur or work in a startup, as soft skills are more and more needed in those working environments
INTERNAL
EXTERNAL
OPPORTUNITIES
THREATS
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Table 4. SWOT analysis for STEM students with equally dominant hard and soft skills
STRENGHTS INTERNAL
EXTERNAL
• Tend to possess general knowledge in multiple fields • Poses adaptability to most situations and potential to convey information easily to others • More likely to get employed
WEAKNESSES • May not have a career path, leading to not becoming an expert in their field
• Less likely to fit in the working environment
OPPORTUNITIES
THREATS
1.4. Skills needed in Industry 4.0 Background Industry 4.0 is a name given to the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, cognitive computing, and others. For a factory or system to be considered Industry 4.0, it must include: • Interoperability — machines, devices, sensors and people that connect and communicate with one another. • Information transparency — the systems create a virtual copy of the physical world through sensor data in order to contextualize information. • Technical assistance — both the ability of the systems to support humans in making decisions and solving problems and the ability to assist humans with tasks that are too difficult or unsafe for humans. • Decentralized decision-making — the ability of cyber-physical systems to make simple decisions on their own and become as autonomous as possible. Along with the changes in the industry, education needs to be improved in order to fulfil the needs of the future market. In this session, we wanted to gather students’ opinions on
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which skills are most needed in the industry 4.0, and make a comparative analysis of what students think they will be needing to what they are learning in their current curricula.
Methodology Table 5. Group division based on participants’ field of study
Group 3: Group 2: Group 1: Electrical Natural sciences IT and computer engineering and and biomedical sciences energetics engineering (7 students) (4 students) (4 students) • IT, computer science - system analysis • IT and design • Software Engineering • Computer Engineering • Human-Computer Interaction • Computer and control engineering
• Chemical Engineering • Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience • Biomedical engineering and physics • Biomedical engineering
• Electrical engineering • Sustainable Energy Systems • Electrical and Computer Engineering
Group 4: Civil, Industrial and mechanical engineering (6 students) • Industrial Engineering and Management • Construction Engineering • Mechanical Engineering • Civil engineering
Participants had the task to brainstorm and cluster ideas on what kind of skills they think they will need in their future jobs. In the following part of the session, the students filled in the questionnaire. The final part of the session was brainstorming on the ways one can gain hard skills needed for the industry 4.0 outside university curricula.
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Outcomes The outcomes can be found in the Appendix in Table A6. The data shows that all of the 21 students find the following skills important: • Basic knowledge of operating system • Using browsers • Using MS office/ docs • Using email • English skills • Writing reports Based on the data gathered, skills proposed by certain group members were usually also perceived as important for other students from that particular group. This shows there is a connection between these fields of study, and that similar fields of study tend to require similar skills, according to the opinions of students. Further conclusions were hard to withdraw due to the low number of members in each group. The results of the questionnaire are presented below. When asked if they have a possibility to gain hard skills relevant for Industry 4.0 in their curriculum, 18 out of 21 students stated that they are gaining these skills in their curriculum, which can be found in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Students opinions on whether it is possible to gain hard skills which are relevant for Industry 4.0 in their University curriculum
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When asked how much time is allocated in their curriculum to gaining these skills, one student stated 100% of his/her curriculum is devoted to it, meaning 40 hours per week in 10 semesters; two students stated it takes up to 75% or around 30 hours per week, and three more that these take up to 50% of the time, around 20 hours per week. Two students stated that their curriculum has 30-35% of the time devoted to gaining these skills (12-14 hours), another two with the range of 20-25% (8-10 hours per week in every semester), and 8 students stated they have around 10% or less devoted to it. Three students stated they are not gaining these skills in their curricula. Students were then asked to provide their opinions on whether the currently allocated time for gaining Industry 4.0 skills is sufficient, and their opinions are shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Students’ opinions on the currently allocated time for developing skills relevant in Industry 4.0 in their University curriculum
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We wanted to examine how students gain hard skills relevant for Industry 4.0 in their curricula (Figure 4) and outside of formal education (Figure 5).
Figure 4. Hard skills relevant for Industry 4.0 which students can gain in their University curriculum
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Figure 5. Ways in which students gain or have gained hard skills relevant for Industry 4.0 outside of curricula
In the final part of the session, ideas were collected on how you can get the hard skills outside the curricula. They are shown visually in Figure 6.
Figure 6. Visual representation of students’ ideas on where to gain hard skills relevant for Industry 4.0 outside of curricula
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1.5. Self-employment skills - what are they, and how can STEM students gain them? Background Entrepreneurship has been described as the “capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture along with any of its risks in order to make a profit”6. Entrepreneurship is still considered to be a “hot topic” worldwide. The lack of job opportunities and the increased access to new technologies, which allows people to start their own businesses, are just two examples of why entrepreneurship may be the key to open many doors for future professionals. Opinions of students on the topic of entrepreneurship have been gathered in some of the previous Events on Education (EoE) organized by BEST. Outcomes of EoE 2013 Timisoara7 were used, with the purpose of reaching further conclusions on skills which are needed for becoming an entrepreneur in STEM professions. Namely, during EoE 2013 Timisoara, in order to bridge topics of virtual mobility and entrepreneurship, students were asked to list the advantages and disadvantages of entrepreneurship, and the outcomes are presented in Table 6.
Business Dictionary, s.v. “entrepreneurship”, accessed March 4, 2019, http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/entrepreneurship.html 7 Mazur, N., Pacheco, J., Mentekidis, J. and Basaran, C., Bringing Education and Entrepreneurship under students’ scope (Board of European Students of Technology, 2013), https://issuu.com/bestorg/docs/baco_timisoara_-__final_report 6
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Table 6. Opinions of participants from EoE Timisoara
Advantages
Disadvantages
Be your own boss
High risk
Flexibility
Huge workload
Dream fulfilment
Lack of support
Contribution to society
Demands different skills
Intrinsic motivation
Financially unstable
Increased creativity
High level of responsibility
Inspiration for others
Highly market dependent
Fast income
Stressful
Possibility to engage family
Hard to quit
Greater self-development
Highly bureaucratic beginning
Methodology The session started with a discussion with the following questions: • Who is considering becoming an entrepreneur? • Who feels comfortable with the idea? • Who thinks he/she has the knowledge to become an entrepreneur? • Why should one become an entrepreneur? Students were asked if they plan to become entrepreneurs, and based on their answers, they were divided into three groups: • Group 1: Students who plan to become entrepreneurs • Group 2: Students who are thinking of becoming an entrepreneur but are not completely sure • Group 3: Students who do not plan to become entrepreneurs.
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All three of the groups brainstormed on what the skills needed for entrepreneurship are. Once the list of skills was created, participants were asked to self-evaluate their level of possession of all skills. We wanted to examine if there is a connection between skills which students find relevant and their self-evaluation of whether they possess those skills. This would show if the students are more likely to become entrepreneurs had they developed self-employment skills during their studies. We also wanted to gather students’ input on the opportunities for learning about entrepreneurship in students’ formal education, as well as through extra-curricular activities.
Outcomes Students identified themselves as likely, unlikely or not certain whether they would become entrepreneurs, and were divided into groups accordingly: • 8/21 students want to become entrepreneurs, • 9/21 students are not sure if they would like to become entrepreneurs, and • 4/21 students do not want to become entrepreneurs. Out of 21 questioned students, three stated that they would like to have a startup. The outcomes of brainstorming on the skills needed to become an entrepreneur can be seen in Table 7. The data shows that students who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs proposed more “positive” skills, while the group of students who do not plan to become entrepreneurs identified several skills which would be needed in “negative” situations
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Table 7. Outcomes of students brainstorming on the skills needed for entrepreneurship in their respective group
Students who want to become entrepreneurs • Budget management • Risk management • Responsibility • Leadership • Creativity • Stress management • Communication skills • Legal knowledge • Business model tools • Marketing skills • Target customer group • Accounting • Field knowledge • Benchmarking • IT skills • Branding • Research on competition • Ability to recognize likeminded people
Students who are not sure if they would like to become entrepreneurs • Teamwork • Crisis management • Time management • Grants and fundraising • Networking • Decision making • Leadership • Flexibility • Good at estimating the financial value • Adaptability • Persuasion • Being a motivator • Delegation • Assertive communication • Persistence
Students who do not want to become entrepreneurs • Discipline • Commitment and creating habits • Be able to endure hardships • Work restlessly • Fundraising skills (for an initial investment) • Being eclectic • Presentation skills • Crisis management • Time management • Self-criticism
The students were asked to give grades from 1 to 5, for the importance of the respective skill for being an entrepreneur, as well as for the self-evaluation of possession of the respective skill, with 1 being the lowest grade. The average grade for both categories was calculated, and the ratio of the average grades was calculated for all three groups separately, as well as for the combined list of all participants. The grades can be seen in Table A7 in the Appendix. ratio = aavveerraaggee ggrraaddee ooff sskkiillll ipmopsoserstasinocne For the skills where ratio = 1 , students, on average, possess the skills they find relevant; for those with ratio > 1 , students do not possess an adequate level of the skill; for the ratio < 1 , skill is less likely to be helpful for being an entrepreneur.
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We extracted skills where the ratio was higher for the group of students wanting to become entrepreneurs than of those who do not, and they are, as follows: • Work restlessly • Fundraising skills (for an initial investment) • Being eclectic • Crisis management • Ability to recognize like-minded people • Teamwork • Leadership • Flexibility • Knowing the financial value
• Adaptability • Persistence • Budget management • Marketing skills • Target customer group • Accounting • Field knowledge • IT skills • Branding
Figure 7. An average grade of skill importance versus an average grade of skill possession for the group of students who want to become entrepreneurs
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Figure 8. An average grade of skill importance versus an average grade of skill possession for the group of students who are not sure if they would like to become entrepreneurs
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Figure 9. An average grade of skill importance versus an average grade of skill possession for the group of students who do not want to become entrepreneurs
When asked if they have courses in their curriculum where they can learn about entrepreneurship, 9 out of 21 students said they do. Out of them, six stated they feel more comfortable with entrepreneurship thanks to that course. Additionally, we gathered input on opportunities to learn about entrepreneurship in different Universities, as either a part of studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; curricula and/or an extra-curricular activity. Only six students shared information about these opportunities, leading to the conclusion that other students may not be familiar with the information whether these types of programmes exist in their university or country. This data can be found in Table A8 in the Appendix.
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1.6. Professional Roles and Employability of Future Engineers (PREFER) Background PREFER (Professional Roles and Employability of Future EngineeRs)8 is a project created in partnership between the Catholic University of Leuven, Delft University of Technology and Dublin Institute of Technology, in order to reduce the skill mismatch in the field of engineering. Young engineering graduates often display a lack of self-awareness of who they are as engineers. The PREFER project aims to help engineering students/graduates with identifying their strengths and weaknesses, and additionally, to provide them with opportunities and to actively explore the wide variety of engineering roles in the labour market. The project has three objectives: 1. to develop a Professional Roles Framework; 2. to develop Innovative Test System, in order to (1) increase engineering students’ awareness of the multitude of professional roles in engineering and (2) make them reflect on their own engineering identity, interests, strengths, and weaknesses; 3. to explore how to structurally embed the Professional Roles Framework and associated tools in the engineering curriculum. The implementation of these tools will result in a modern learning environment wherein students can shape their own engineering identity.
Methodology The session was conducted together with professor Dr Greet Langie from KU Leuven, who is also one of the project team members. Langie presented the project and their work so far.
8
“PREFER”, http://preferproject.eu/index.html, accessed March 4, 2019
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In the theoretical part, Dr Langie presented three types of vacancy of engineers: 1. Team lead production methods and industrialization; 2. Research and development; 3. Technical-commercial representative. Dr Langie proceeded to gather studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; input on which vacancy they would apply for. She then shared the data which shows the inconsistency between what students want to do, versus the needs of the job market. To reference this, participants were asked to read from the list of competencies, and select three competencies they think they have developed the most. Then theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d type in the name of the competencies via software, which then generated the visual image of the most common among our participants. Following that, students were asked to select three competencies they would like to have in their future job - not necessarily what they are good at, rather than what they would like to do. Once again, the competencies were typed in the same software, which then gave the visual representation of the data. The last part of the session aimed to help improve the questionnaire needed for the PREFER project.
Outcomes
Figure 10. Distribution of studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; answers to which job vacancy students would apply for.
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Figure 11. Visual representation of studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; most developed competencies.
Figure 12. Visual representation of competences students would most like to employ.
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2. Pedagogy in STEM education 2.1. Active Learning and its role in Higher Education This session was conducted in collaboration with our educational partner and expert Sofia Sá, MSc in Educational Psychology and Pedagogical Trainer for Teachers.
Background An important part of learning, is the environment created for the student inside the classroom and especially within the structure of the learning process. Related to that, there are different types of teaching methods which are being used nowadays. Those can be divided into the following categories: • Pure lecture, • Lecture with occasional question answering, • Interactive lectures/Micro active learning, • Low-stake activities, • Activities during the lecture, • Promoting reflection, participation and application of the concepts explained during the lecture, • Macro active learning (High-stake activities), • Project-based learning, • Inquiry-based learning, • Flipped classroom, • In-class flip. The pure lecture is a class where only the lecturer speaks and there is a purely transmissive purpose.
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The questioning lecture is the type of class, where the lecturer asks questions to students while transmitting the content. Interactive lectures, also called Micro active learning, is a class that includes active learning activities such as quizzes, talking to your neighbour and/or practical exercises to do autonomously. Project-based learning9 is a methodology where students work on a project over an extended period of time – from a week up to a semester – which engages them to solve a real-world problem or answer a complex question. They demonstrate their knowledge and skills by developing a public product or presentation for a real audience. Inquiry-based learning10 is an approach to teaching and learning that places students’ questions, ideas and observations at the centre of the learning experience. Educators play an active role throughout the process by establishing a culture where ideas are respectfully challenged, tested, redefined and viewed as improbable, moving children from a position of wondering to a position of enacted understanding and further questioning (Scardamalia, 2002). Underlying this approach is the idea that both educators and students share responsibility for learning. For students, the process often involves open-ended investigations into a question or a problem, requiring them to engage in evidence-based reasoning and creative problem-solving, as well as “problem finding.” For educators, the process is about being responsive to the students’ learning needs, and most importantly, knowing when and how to introduce students to ideas that will move them forward in their inquiry. Together, educators and students co-author the learning experience, accepting mutual responsibility for planning, assessment for learning and the advancement of the individual, as well as a class-wide understanding of personally meaningful content and ideas. With the Flipped classroom11, students have direct access to the knowledge and the teacher serves as a coach and mentor. With the flipped classroom model, students have to prepare their contact moments. During contact moments teachers are able to zoom in on the application and deeper processing of the learning material. In this case, the learning material is absorbed before the class.
“What is PBL?”, PBLWorks, accessed March 23, 2019, https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl Fielding, M., “Beyond student voice: Patterns of partnership and the demands of deep democracy”, Revista de Educación, 359 (September 2012): 45–65. 11 “Flipped classroom vs. traditional”, EasyLMS, accessed March 23, 2019, https://www.easy-lms.com/knowledge-center/about-flipped-classroom/flipped-classroom-vstraditional-classroom/item10611 9
10
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Just like with a traditional flip, with the In-class flip12, the teacher pre-records direct instruction, say, in a video lecture, but instead of having students view the content at home, that video becomes a station in class that small groups rotate through. The rest of their time is spent on other activities -- independent work and group work, with some activities related to the lesson and others focusing on different course content. As with a traditional flip, the direct instruction runs on its own, which frees the teacher for more one-on-one time with students.their definition of pedagogical and soft skills.
Methodology The session started using Kahoot, an online voting tool, to check the background of the participants and the current states of their universities and studies. This was followed up by a group work: the participants were split into four equally-sized random groups and rotated through four stations. The four groups had the opportunity to contribute to all the stations in their own ways. There was a laptop at each station, on which the participants contributed to a presentation, that was finished and polished by the last group. The four different stations aimed to provide: • Examples of micro active learning activities, • Advantages of applying micro active learning activities, • Disadvantages of applying micro active learning activities in lectures, • What are the characteristics of an effective lecture? The instructions for the participants were, as follows: • “Each round, one slide”, • “We need to write beyond what the other groups wrote“ , • “When time is up, we move clockwise”. For each of the stations, there were 5-7 minutes allocated for them to prepare each part.
“Modifying the Flipped Classroom: The “In-Class” Version”, Edutopia, accessed March 23, 2019, https://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-in-class-version-jennifer-gonzalez 13 Kahoot, accessed March 23, 2019, https://kahoot.it/ 12
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The contribution to the presentations followed the principle 3 -> 2 -> 1 -> conclusion; this means that the first group needed to come up with three aspects, then the second group with two new aspects that were not mentioned before, the third group then added one new aspect that was not mentioned before. The fourth group then drew a conclusion of the work from all the other groups before. The session ended with a Google form where the opinions of the participants were collected.
Outcomes We examined the frequency of active learning in previous experiences of surveyed students. The data can be found in the Appendix in Table A9. It shows that professors are most likely to either only present the lecture (14 students stated it happens “Very frequently” and 6 stated it happens “Occasionally”), or present it including some questions for students to answer (5 stated “Very frequently” and 15 stated “Occasionally”). For all the other types of teaching methods, the majority of students stated they happen “Rarely” or “Never”. All in all, this shows clearly that, in most cases, lectures, with or without questions, are the most common teaching methods. On the other hand, Flipped classrooms or in-class flip are rarely or never experienced by the participants. According to the participants, micro active learning is more enjoyable, more efficient and more attractive for both students and teachers. It reaches students with different learning preferences, encourages engagement and proactivity, gives them the opportunity to use the gained information. Teachers have a more active audience, they get better feedback during the lecture and less work at the same time. An effective lecture has the consequence of students being more motivated, more active, more attentive and feeling more comfortable. For the lecturer, is it positive, since they can provide the students with real-life applications and that the lecture is well structured and has continuity. To be effective, the activities should be really well prepared, in order not to lose time or attention. The students should also think it’s valuable and worth it, and they should take an active part in it because if they don’t the activity won’t be possible. Implementing micro active learning activities could make students remember better some concepts, in addition to being more motivated. Both the students and the professors would have a little break in the middle of the lectures.
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There are several ways to implement micro active learning, like apps such as Kahoot, and small class discussions and activities. Every teacher can choose one based on their preferences, or the preferences of their students. Some of the examples of micro active learning activities can be: • Kahoot and similar applications, • Mini exercises in groups - implementing what the teacher talked about, • One on one discussion - a short discussion with the person sitting next to you about intermediate conclusions, • Socrative: an app to do a questionnaire with open-ended questions. They would appear on the screen so that you can discuss after, • A little debate with the whole class, • Before students leave (for recess, lunch, the end of the day, their next class, or are transitioning to another subject area), they have to hand you a “ticket” filled out with an answer to a question, a solution to a problem, or a response to what they’ve learned, called exit ticket. Participants were asked to provide their opinions on whether lectures should be abandoned in Higher Education. The data can be found in Figure 13.
Figure 11. Visual representation of students’ most developed competencies.
Participants were asked to elaborate on their statements.
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Three out of 21 students stated they would like to have a mixture of lectures and activeoriented activities, and additionally, one student added to that statement saying “traditional lectures can be useful for introductory lectures, [and] they could be followed by activities that can help with understanding the introduced concepts or deepen knowledge”. Six students stated that “[lectures] are needed but in a different format”. One student stated that “the current teaching methods don’t work very well in the current times that require much more focus in much shorter time periods”. One student explicitly stated that “they should not disappear, but there should be fewer lectures”. There was one opinion that “the reduction percentage of pure lectures would depend on the field of study”. Regarding opinions of students who disagreed with the statement, one student argued that lectures should not be abandoned, as they represent “a first taste of the content in that format”, and there was also one student who said that “for some purposes, pure lectures may be effective”. One student stated that “there are some subjects that need lectures”, and another that “2-hour lectures teach students discipline”. Table 8. Students’ estimation on the percentage of current lectures which is pure transmission
The percentage
10 %
20 %
30 %
40 %
60 %
65 %
70 %
75 %
80 %
90 %
99 %
Number of students with that opinion (out of 21)
2
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
5
4
1
Based on data shown in Table 8, more than half of the surveyed students stated pure transmission takes 70-99% of the lecture.
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Table 9. Students’ estimation of the percentage of the lecture that should be pure transmission
The percentage
0 %
10 %
20 %
25 %
30 %
35 %
40 %
50 %
60 %
90 %
Number of students with that opinion (out of 21)
3
3
3
1
2
1
3
3
1
1
Based on the data shown in Table 9, more than half of the surveyed students think pure transmission should take up 0-30% of lectures. Table 10. Students’ experience on the percentage of micro active learning which is being applied in an average 90-minute lecture
Percentage of micro active learning
0%
2%
3%
4%
30 %
Number of students with the respective opinions (out of 21)
16
2
1
1
1
Based on the data shown in Table 9, more than half of the surveyed students think pure transmission should take up 0-30% of lectures. Table 11. Students’ opinions on the percentage of micro active learning which should be applied in an average 90-minute lecture
Percentage of micro active learning
1%
2%
2.5 %
3%
4%
6%
30 %
Number of students with the respective opinions (out of 21)
1
7
1
7
3
1
1
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Table 12. Students’ opinions on what length micro active learning should have in lectures
The percentage of micro active learning
5%
7%
10 %
15 %
20 %
30 %
45 %
100 %
Number of students with the respective opinion (out of 21)
2
2
3
8
3
1
1
1
2.2. What are the best questions to ask in classes? Background Lecture demonstrations are necessary for many courses in STEM curricula. Instructors see demonstrations as a way to help students develop an intuitive understanding of the world and remember concepts, and often as a way to liven up lectures. However, demonstrations may not be effective in promoting student learning and may even be counterproductive. How many things students learn from demonstrations depends on the way the demonstration is presented. (Mazur)14 15. Some studies of demonstrations have examined the relationship between students’ predictions and what they observe during a demonstration. Students often see what they predicted, even when this observation is different from what the instructor is actually demonstrating. Hence, predictions are necessary, but they may not be sufficient. In one of the studies, the role of predictions on conceptual learning was examined, in order to compare them to how students’ predictions affect what they will have learned in the class. Therefore, conceptual questions were created to test students’ fundamental understanding of lessons, and help them better understand the underlying principles of a lecture. Conclusions of above-mentioned papers show that these questions significantly increase
Crouch, Fagen, Callan and Mazur; “Classroom demonstrations: Learning tools or entertainment?”. American Association of Physics Teachers, (Feb 20, 2004). 15 Miller, Lasry, Chu and Mazur; “Role of physics lecture demonstrations in conceptual learning”. Phys. Rev. St. Phys. Educ. Res. 9, (Sep 17, 2013) 14
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students’ understanding of the lectures, as well as learning and remembering what was taught in the classes. The aim of our session was to check if these types of questions are being used by professors in different European Universities and if they were, whether students perceive them to be helpful in achieving a better understanding.
Methodology The session started with a short discussion with students about ways their professors use questions in class. Students were then asked to grade the productivity levels they feel they have in more practical classes (not when the theory is being presented) also keeping in mind how interactive the classes are. They needed to grade their average satisfaction of how engaged they are during classes, on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest grade (not satisfied at all), and 10 highest (really satisfied) Next, students were asked to grade how often professors implement new working methods in their lectures, on a scale from 1 to 10, 1 being that they are always doing one thing and never implement new teaching techniques, and 10 always switching to different methodologies. Following that, the above-mentioned papers and their outcomes were presented, and in regards to what was presented, the facilitator asked the participants the following questions, in order to get the numerical data: • Do you have something similar to conceptual questions being asked in classes? • How many of you have lecture demonstrations that can be observed in classes? • How many students out of the ones who have classroom demonstrations have had the opportunity to firstly give predictions to the outcomes, and only then see the demonstrations?
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Outcomes One student stated a negative experience when it comes to asking questions in class by students. [University of Novi Sad, Serbia] The student recalls having a teaching assistant in a programming course about making operative systems. Whatever students asked in the class, he’d tell them to google it; he would not give answers to their questions, nor he was the one asking questions in class. One student stated having a positive example of their professors asking constructive questions in the class. Another participant stated he had a professor in economics class, who had a very “trendy” mindset. He’d do a recap of what happened at the end of the lecture and would ask questions to connect things during the session. The professor was really following the questions of students and would pause the lecture in order to explain to everyone, enhancing the input of students (University of Porto, Portugal). Following that, we asked participants to grade their opinions on their satisfaction with personal engagement during classes, as well as the frequency of professors implementing new working methods. The data can be seen in Tables 13 and 14, respectively. Table 13. Participants’ satisfaction with personal engagement during classes on a scale from 1 (not satisfied) to 10 (fully satisfied)
Grade
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Number of students who gave that grade (out of 19 students)
-
-
1
5
5
4
-
3
1
-
Table 14. Students’ grade on how often professors implement new working methods in their lectures, on a scale from 1 (never implement new teaching techniques) to 10 (always switching to different methodologies)
Grade
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Number of students who gave that grade (out of 19 students)
1
-
10
3
1
3
-
1
-
-
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When asked if students have had something similar to conceptual questions being asked in classes, 18 out of 19 students stated they have had conceptual or similar types of questions asked in the class before. After learning that 18 out of 19 students have lectures where some sort of demonstrations can be applied, 14 out of them stated they have had the opportunity to firstly give predictions to the outcomes, and only then see the demonstrations, showing this practice to be rather common amongst the students who participated in this event. Finally, we gathered input on different creative methodologies used by professors in classes of the participants. They can be found in Table A10 in the Appendix.
2.3. Fun and Joy of Researching and Ruminating This session was conducted in collaboration with Dr Angela Fösel, PhD in Physics and professor at University Erlangen-Nurnberg.
Background Nowadays, it is a common belief, amongst both students and professors, that teaching methods used in Higher Education are outdated and too theoretical. Students’ opinions on the lack of practical work are becoming louder and clearer in STEM fields, where it’s necessary to have experience for future jobs. At the same time, around Europe, there are many out-of-curriculum projects which are promoting independent work and creativity in engineering and science. One of the projects that were shown as successful and useful were the research camps for high school students created by prof. Dr Angela Fösel, which are called Erlangen Student Research Centre (Erlangen Schülerforschungszentrum, ESFZ)16. The idea was born as a support for students who are genuinely interested in science and technology. With this project, students have the opportunity to carry out projects they have thought out themselves and also make the first contact with the possibilities they have later in
Erlangen Schülerforschungszentrum (ESFZ), https://www.esfz.nat.uni-erlangen.de/, retrieved April 2019 16
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professional life. One of the main goals of this project is the promotion of students’ interest in science and technology, creativity, initiative and critical faculties. In order to gather input from all over Europe in similar projects, participants were asked if they’ve heard or even participated on some similar projects that promote creativity in professional fields, how they think that impacted on them and how would they improve it.
Methodology After the expert’s presentation, there was a discussion on similar projects on participants’ local universities. Collective brainstorming was used as a method to write down the complete and clear ideas. After the whole group provided their input, eight ideas were written as the outcome of the brainstorming. Each participant got to vote for the top three of the proposed ideas which they would like to work on. Then, five ideas with most votes were chosen, in order to improve them further by the participants during this session. Groups of participants were formed based on their personal preference, meaning they choose to work on the topic they like the most. The improvement of the chosen ideas included creating an action plan with SMART goals and actions.
Outcomes The basis for brainstorming was Dr Fosel’s outcomes of students’ motivation, improvement and success in the fields of science and technology. The first step to gather outcomes in this session was brainstorming on ideas that have similar goals. Participants were asked if they’ve heard or participated in projects which aim to promote students’ professional creativity and development in their field of study. Participants came up with eight project ideas, which can be found in Table 15.
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Table 15. Results of the brainstorming on projects in European Universities provided outside of curricula
Project name Innovation room FABLab Students’ idea sharing platform Patent modification Students remodelling University Case Study Club IT Students Hackathon Students’ consulting group
Short explanation University room where students can put ideas on the wall without any deadline so they can find colleagues to work with on these ideas. The open laboratory where students can come anytime and physically work on their project. Forum for students to gather and share notes, ideas and future projects. Working group takes one patent and works on it to improve it or modify it in the direction that’s required. University hires a group of students from a specific field that is needed for improvement of the University’s infrastructure. A constant environment for doing a case study a few times a year. Students are finding a solution to one problem in the IT field. Group of students that help several enterprises in a way of bringing creativity and their ideas, or even help with their knowledge.
The ideas which were voted as top 5 are Innovation room, FabLab, Students’ Idea Sharing Platform, Patent modification and Students remodelling university. They were then further improved using SMART goals and actions, and are described below. • Innovation room Before starting the project, the group decided it is necessary to present the idea of Innovation room to the students’ council and NGOs to the University and do it as soon as possible, up until one month. After that, the group planned to get room to work in, and that goal would be achieved by asking the administration office. In one month, it would be needed to find some funds. The room would be decorated with four whiteboards and two big tables and chairs. After the room is ready, it’s necessary to appoint someone responsible for the key to the room. After the innovation the room starts being used, projects that are in progress should be put on the wall so everyone can see it and people who are interested can join. In order to promote the current projects and the idea of sharing projects, University should put a short article on their official webpage at least once a week.
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To make the whole projects successful, the Room should be promoted. The first step in promotion is contacting the University’s PR responsible. Except for the weekly article on the University webpage, all the new information should be uploaded regularly on Facebook. The room should be also promoted within NGOs so that many different students can use it. • Patent Modification The first step in the realisation of this project is to find professors who would like to be mentors since this kind of work is possible to create many doubts or even problems. In one month, the goal is to gather 50 patents from databases, so that the student who will be applying can choose between several options. The next step is to contact patent owners to ask them permission so that students can work on their project. During that time, it is necessary to evaluate the future expenses and fundraise the project by the University and Companies that are willing to work on this. Also, a database should be created and a working place should be found so students can develop their projects with the proper equipment and in proper time. During the whole projects, it’s needed to promote the existence of this database on social media networks, with promotional materials and emails. • Idea Sharing Platform This idea was made as a project that will enable students to help other students. It is a platform which is a combination of social media and a database, where everyone can point out their ideas. The reason for doing this platform is to share ideas, categorize them and bring them to life by contacting other people (students, professors, companies) and work on them. The action plan is divided into five steps. The first step was to define the mission and vision. After that, it was crucial to create a team which will program the platform. The plan is to make this in two weeks. After four to six weeks from the beginning, the team should start with conceptual design by including the student associations. In eight weeks, the site should be designed, tested and released online. After the page is working, the team can start with its promotion on social media and on the University, with class pitching. After the platform starts working regularly, the team should do the maintenance and find financial support for future development.
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• Uni Remodeling This project is based on specific necessities of the University. The idea is that every time the University has a need for improvement it opens a competition for the most convenient student ideas with special requirements. After the University shows the requirements, teams of students should apply and complete the idea. They have a deadline of one week for the first idea. After that, they are competing for the implementation of the idea. The whole project lasts for one semester and in that time experts (like professors and external professionals) are open to help and guide ideas in the right direction. The team whose idea wins the competition and starts being implemented at the University wins the scholarship. As this competition is open it should be promoted by the University on the official University’s webpage, also on Facebook and Instagram and with wall posters in hallways. • FABLab The main reason for making this project is to improve students’ motivation. This is the project for idea sharing, for making ideas a reality, for testing those ideas and through that, to improve the ability to work in a team and develop other soft skills. For the realisation of FABLab, it’s needed to get funds and find a place in one month. Before Lab starts its work, it’s necessary to take care of the safety and cleaning part, define working hours and find volunteers. In a deal with the local University, the furnishing of the room should be done with machines that are most commonly used in future jobs. As for materials, students using FABLab should pay the reduced price for materials. More detailed, this group also did an action plan that consists of nine points. The first step is to find support from an advisor from the University, then get funding from stakeholders like University, companies and government. After funding is dealt, it’s necessary to find a place where FABLab will be held, that’s a place like a free room at the university area, hubs and isolated halls. Besides volunteers, the project would require employees, such as a lab technician and cleaning staff. In the first 6 months of work, all machines and safety equipment that is needed should be bought. To improve the work of this project, the group came to the idea of making a scheduling system. It would start as a simple online sheet for signing up and booking and after some time it would evolve into a website or even a mobile app. Also, to hold the professional level high, the feedback system should be made. It should be made firstly written and then online so that the stakeholders of this project (University, students/volunteers and companies) know what to do to improve it.
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2.4. How much internship is too much internship? This session was conducted in collaboration with our educational partner and expert Rebecca Broadbent, MSc in Mechanical Engineering and PhD student at Aston University.
Background These days one of the most important qualifications that an employer seeks from students is work experience. Students who did an internship while studying have more opportunities and are more valued by their employer. We wanted to examine what is the situation in Europe. Are internships compulsory or should they be compulsory? What is the better solution for the students and what internship means to them? Prior research regarding internships was done, and the main conclusions were: • If a student does an internship overseas then he/she is the most qualified, according to companies; • If a student does an internship in his/her country then he/she is qualified and would be employed after the ones attending internship overseas; • If a student does not attend an internship while studying, he/she has the least possibility to be employed by the company.
Methodology This session was started with a facilitated discussion, talking about experiences which the participants had about the types of internships. Afterwards, a presentation was held by Ms Broadbent with the most common definitions of internships, their role and quality. In addition to the presentation, Ms Broadbent was posing questions to the participants.
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The next part was a SWOT analysis, conducted in four groups. The SWOT was about their point of view about the internship: • Group one: Strengths, • Group two: Weaknesses, • Group three: Opportunities, • Group four: Threats. At the end of the session, Ms Broadbent summarized conclusions from the whole session and asked her last question which was “How much internship is too much internship?”, which was followed by a short discussion.
Outcomes Out of 21 students, 8 have already had an internship at some point during their studies. In the presentation, there were six different definitions of internships. It was pointed out that there are a lot more because one definition is really hard to find. The dictionary definition is wide and not so useful. If we look at it from the perspective of personal development, especially in some specific skills, It’s usually experienced before job hunting. The outcomes of the discussion were: • Students’ motivation to do an internship are wanting to see the field from the inside, gain experience and find a job after an internship;, • The role of the internship in STEM education is getting practical knowledge over the theoretical one. The conclusion of the participants was that any kind of experience is better than none, and it doesn’t even have to be in the STEM field, because, as was found during the research, the companies also look for students with good soft skills, extracurricular activities and students involved in student organizations. When asked if it is the university’s job to try and find internships for the students or if students by themselves need to be responsible for finding an internship, the input was that at the moment, it is mostly up to the students, as it’s hard to find an internship that’s accepted from the university’s side. Companies, on the other side, often don’t know what to do with the interns.
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When asked what makes a good internship, several criteria were defined: • Having a mentor, being mentored, • Having a precise objective and understanding the impact of the internship, • A pleasant working atmosphere where you’re bridging and working well. What is considered to be a bad internship is when a student is feeling used, and as if they don’t have a purpose other than doing insignificant tasks. Table 16 shows the outcomes of the SWOT analysis. Table 16. Results of the SWOT analysis
INTERNAL
EXTERNAL
STRENGHTS
WEAKNESSES
• Get introduced to a company in which the student would like to work in • Improve students’ CVs • Expand one’s network and get some contacts • Feeling productive • Opportunity to earn money • Adapt to a working environment • Get a career perspective • Increase chances to get employed • Gain patience • Use of new technologies • Getting employed after an internship • Work experience for future jobs • Networking • Self-improvement • Use the gained knowledge for studies, i.e. for a thesis
• Fewer opportunities for inexperienced students • Taking advantage of students • A student may not be satisfied with the gained experience
OPPORTUNITIES
THREATS
• Demotivation • Possible delay in graduation • An infinite circle of internships • Not get paid • Not learning from it • Not related to your field of studies
The final part of the session aimed to answer the question of how much internship is too much internship.
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Negative sides of doing plenty of internships were identified as: • Future employers may wonder why the person hasn’t made it to the job position already, • There’s a need to become an expert in one field, rather than trying everything out. Benefits of having plenty of internships were identified as learning about different fields, making it easier to choose the future profession and workplace. The participants discussed when is the most optimal time to have an internship, and the outcomes are: • Having an internship in the first year of university is not useful, because students lack specific knowledge in their field, • After 3 years, at the end of a bachelor’s degree, it’s good to have an internship, because then the student can more easily choose what to specialize in. The optimal duration of the internship was defined to last 3-6 months. That way, it can fit into one semester, and ideally, it should not be during part of the year when students have classes to attend.
2.5. Is continuous learning a key for better education? This session was conducted together with professor Dr Alfredo Soeiro from the University of Porto.
Background In a world that’s constantly changing, being an engineer in any field requires being up-todate with the newest technologies and scientific discoveries. This means that knowledge development needs to be one’s priority if one wants to be successful. There are many organisations that support lifelong learning and personal development of a wide group of engineers in Europe, using web pages and conferences to spread the information. Expert in this session, Alfredo Soeiro, had years of experience of working on practice in civil engineering, before becoming a professor at the University of Porto, which made him a perfect expert for our session on lifelong learning. He has experience both in practical improvement during ages and scientific work. He’s also part of European Federation of
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National Engineering Associations (FEANI)17, which is a federation of professional engineers that unites national engineering association from 34 European Higher Education Area (EHEA) countries. The goal of this session was to see how aware are participants from all over Europe of a sustainable future on education and in what amount they use out-of-curriculum possibilities of self-education. In order to fulfil the goal, the expert presented the idea of a Personal Development Plan (PDP) - a plan which can be created for individuals, as well as for groups of people. PDP allows goal setting in any field the person wants, but for this particular session, it was made with a focus on education.
Methodology The session started with Dr Soeiro giving an introductory presentation on the basis of lifelong learning. Participants were divided into three groups, based on years of their studies: • first and second-year students, • third and fourth-year students, • students close to graduating and postgraduate students. Based on their experience, they developed a timeline PDP for an average person their age who is studying at an engineering school. Their PDP had to be made for the next 10 years. As a last part of the session, after each group has presented their timelines, participants were asked to vote on certain points from the group’s plan, chosen by the session facilitator, in order to see if the points are relevant to a wider range of students.
17
FEANI, https://www.feani.org/, Retrieved April 2019.
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Outcomes • GROUP 1 - students in the first and second year of their studies This group had just started their studies so their development plan consisted of ending the studies. The first point was to do a mobility program so they can be able to see different views of studies and cultures. Although this group was the youngest, four people already had an experience of Erasmus+ or a similar mobility program. Until the end of the studies, their goal is also to do internships, so they can gain the experience of working in a real company and gain the soft skills that come with working in a business environment. Also, their opinion is that conferences are useful to learn outside of university and stay up-todate with the newest trends in one specific field. To learn practically and develop personally this group is planning to join a students’ organisation, NGO and to volunteer. Different research groups can help young people to specify what they want in their field and open new possibilities, so this group thinks it’s useful to join one to be more clear about future plans. To gain experience that is close to faculty and university, this group is planning to do the online courses that are complementary to the studies. Courses like this are free or cheap and at the same time, they can help during studies. Also, trying out a few student jobs while studying gives them an opportunity to try new and different things without obligations. This is also closely connected with an international job. Table 17. Points from Personal Development Plan that students of the first and second year of their studies find relevant
Point from PDP
Number of people who think it’s valid for them (out of 21 participants)
Foreign languages are important.
0
Online courses are common in the field.
11
Changing the field of work during life.
4
An international job is important.
21
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• GROUP 2 - students in the third and fourth year of their studies This group divided their PDP into three stages. The plan started with choosing a master’s program. This requires them to know what they want to work on in the future, even more specifically that they had to know when they chose their faculty. During the master’s program, the goals are similar to those of the previous group: one should do a student exchange, internships, attend conferences and seminars. This will help students to expand both their contacts and knowledge. This group also made a group of unspecific points that one should develop during the Master’s and final phase of the study program. One should develop both soft and hard skills in professional and private life, and during some time one should realize which ones are more important for them and work on them. Also, one should step out of the comfort zone and meet the research centres and companies that one wants to have a future job in. In their opinion, it’d be useful to look for different companies and fields. The third group of important points in the PDP consists of useful points to do outside of faculty, in order to develop as a person and to gain life experience. The main point in this group is to meet people and to have contacts worldwide, also to travel and get new ideas. Going abroad will help one to get another vision of a problem and solving problems in different countries based on the knowledge they have. Table 18. Points from Personal Development Plan that students of the third and fourth year of their studies find relevant for them
Point from PDP
Number of people who think it’s valid for them (out of 21 participants)
Filtering companies is important.
13
It’s easier to develop by joining the organisations. How many countries have obligatory organisations for working in a specific engineering field?
21 5 (Greece, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Russia)
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• GROUP 3 - Fifth year and PhD This group also divided their PDP, and they did it in two big parts. Their future started that moment, on BSE Lisbon, where they had the opportunity to meet new people and their stories about their education. The first part was referring to the first five years after graduation. The plan was to prepare a good CV and learn how to do an interview. Also, the group found workshops for skills very important after gaining the knowledge from a university. Both soft and hard skills can be learnt from their mentor while still studying. One of the goals is also to work abroad to get multicultural experience. This plan should be updated every three months, according to this group. After five years, the goal is to be a project leader at work. This will help them gain leading skills. In this time, one should attend conferences and workshops. Also, to stay updated, one should do online courses. At BSE Lisbon 2028, the goal is to be an expert in your field. For the final part of the session, students were asked to vote for the following points from the group’s plan, chosen by the facilitator of the session: • Updating a DP is necessary every 3 months (while still studying), • Updating a PDP is necessary every 6 months (after finishing studies), • Updating PDP is necessary every 12 months as you become a professional in your field, • Being an expert in BSE Lisbon 2028. The number of votes can be seen in Figure 14.
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Figure 14. Number of students out of 21 who agree with the respective point from the PDP
2.6. How satisfied are you with your University and the knowledge you are getting? Background This Symposium had 21 participants from all over Europe. There was a clear difference between cultures, languages and personalities, but the difference that was put in focus for this session were personal opinions on universities and knowledge. We wanted to see the participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; attitude on knowledge and managing in a future job position. It is a common opinion that students do not feel prepared for a job position, that they are studying useless information (or even no longer relevant information), which is not needed once a person starts their professional career. With this session, we wanted to investigate the satisfaction and self-confidence of participants regarding this aspect of their studies and examine if there are any similarities in groups of participants with a similar level of satisfaction.
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Methodology The questionnaire was created in order to introduce the topic and gather numerical data. It consisted of 22 questions, divided into five categories, describing different aspects of university experience: • Professors, • Classes, • Practice & Laboratory work, • Curriculum, and • Preparation for the future job. Questions were defined in such a way that participants could provide their personal opinion and experience. After the questionnaire was filled, there was a discussion on overall satisfaction where everyone could say what they thought about specific questions from the questionnaire. This was done in order to ensure that all participants understood the questions the same way. Participants were asked to grade the overall satisfaction with their university on a scale from 1 to 5, with the following meaning: • Number 1 meant low satisfaction, described as: I feel scared when I think about what’s waiting for me in a future position. I have only theoretical knowledge. I don’t think I’d be able to understand the tasks gives and that I’ll definitely need a good mentor who’d explain everything in details before I start any of my tasks. • Number 2 meant low satisfaction, described as: I feel scared when I think about what’s waiting for me in a future position. I think I have enough knowledge to understand the tasks. Still, I need a mentor to guide me before all my tasks. • Number 3 meant average satisfaction, described as: I feel prepared in theoretical knowledge, but I have a lack of practice and I think there’s a need for more practice. Still, I had a few contacts with jobs in my future profession. • Number 4 meant high satisfaction, described as: Above the theoretical knowledge, I think I have enough practical knowledge to understand tasks by myself with small supervision and approval of a mentor.
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• Number 5 meant total satisfaction and was described as: I feel prepared for a future job position. Through the last years of study I gained both knowledge and experience, so I believe I’m ready to react to any task that’s given to me in practice. Each number with a description was explained and participants had to divide themselves by this scale. This division was used after for group work, which consisted of finding the similarities between groups.
Outcomes The data gathered via the questionnaire can be seen below, arranged for 5 different categories. • 1. Professors Table 19. Students’ satisfaction with their professors
Satisfaction with all professors combined
Number of participants who gave the respective grade
1 (Really low)
1
2 (Low)
5
3 (Average)
3
4 (High)
10
5 (Really high)
1
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Table 20. Distribution of studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; professors who grade only final test and not overall involvement/activity in class during the semester
A weight of test results in the final grade
Number of participants
0-10 %
-
10-20 %
-
20-30 %
-
30-40%
-
40-50%
1
50-60 %
1
60-70 %
2
70-80 %
-
80-90 %
2
90-100 %
14
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â&#x20AC;˘ 2. Classes 5. How satisfied are you with all of your professors combined? (average)
Figure 15. Division of the participants based on satisfaction with professors on their University
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Table 21. Students’ opinions on the length of the classes
Answer
Number of participants
Too long
5
The right amount of time
15
Too short
-
Table 22. Students’ opinions on the efficiency of their classes
Answer
Number of participants
Efficient
7
Not efficient
13
Table 23. Students’ opinions if all classes should be of the same length
Answer
Number of participants
Yes
2
No
17
Not sure
1
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â&#x20AC;˘ 3. Practice & Laboratory work
Figure 16. Division of the participants based on satisfaction with practice and laboratory work in their University Table 24. Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; answers to the question of all of the subjects have some practical work
Answer
Number of participants
Yes
12
No
8
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Table 25. Students’ answers to the question if the practical work is efficient
Answer
Number of participants
Yes
12
No
4
50% - 50%
4
Table 26. Students’ answers to the question whether the content of the lab work/practices develops over time
Answer
Number of participants
Yes
15
No
5
Table 27. Students’ answers to the question if the practice work follows and/or goes along with the theory
Answer
Number of participants
Yes
14
No
4
50% - 50%
1
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• 4. Curriculum
Figure 17. Students’ satisfaction with their curriculum Table 28. Students’ answers to whether they would like to change anything about their curricular or not
Answer
Number of participants
Make no/ very little changes
8
Make some changes
7
Neutral answer/ no opinion on it
5
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Table 29. Students’ opinions on if all subjects are in an order logical to them.
Answer
Number of participants
Yes
10
No
8
Partially / You choose your subjects
1
• 5. Preparation for the future job
Figure 18. Students’ satisfaction with how the university prepares them for their future jobs
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Figure 19. Distribution of how many times students had the opportunity to apply the gained knowledge outside of the university
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Figure 20. Participants’ overall satisfaction with their University and study programme
To make groups as equal as possible, participants who were standing on number 3 were told to think about their satisfaction once again, and if possible to move to one of the sides. That resulted in having three approximately equal groups: highly satisfied students, lowly satisfied students and students with average satisfaction. They had to write down and describe what all people in each group have in common, divide their common university experience into five points and present their outcomes. • Low satisfaction This group described teachers that make them unsatisfied, such as teachers with lack of time and patience. Usually, they have to teach quickly and sometimes they have no personal motivation to teach. Since there is no change in teaching methods, the students’ motivation doesn’t get a boost during the semester. Classes are usually really basic, have too many students per class and are presented with a big amount of data, which is sometimes unnecessary.
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Practical work has a lack of personal (professors’ or assistants’) help, there is a lack of materials in laboratories and the equipment is old or of bad quality. In addition, working groups are too big. When it comes to the curricula of these students, the biggest problem is that classes are badly organised. Sometimes, professors require knowledge that hasn’t been learnt yet and will be learned in the next few years of studies. Also, it can happen that there are too many subjects that are unrelated. The point of preparation for the future was described as bad because of the usage of old software and not showing and learning about the most recent technologies. • Average satisfaction In this group, students outlined the fact that they have some amazing professors and some of them that are not good. Professors that are good in their opinions are competent within their field. On the other hand, professors don’t want to implement new teaching methods, which these students would find useful. The duration of classes varies so some of the classes don’t fit the amount of knowledge they require. However, there’s a common practice that professors are doing summaries and recaps in the beginning of classes and after the breaks. Practical work in this group was described as work that has real-life applications and generally has an appropriate scope for the specific curriculum. The curriculum has plenty of overlapping, but they can have optional courses and make their own order of some classes which is good. • High satisfaction When it comes to the group of highly satisfied participants, several things were common. Although they described their Universities as highly demanding, they said that their professors are always open for help. Professors use both traditional and new methods of teaching, but the common thing is interactiveness and energy brought to the class. About half of work (projects, studying for exams, oral exams) is done singly and professors are there to grade work done by students.
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The average duration of the classes is not the same among all members of this group, but the group thinks time on the classes is spent wisely. There are some professors that require students to be present on classes and usually, those are the professors that do practical knowledge of those classes, knowledge that cannot be learnt from the books. In this group, students find a curriculum useful for what is waiting for them in the future. Also, in this group participants said they can choose extra and additional classes, extracurricular, and that this helps them focus on things they actually like in their future profession. The conclusion of the session is that there are many similarities within groups when it comes to the description of the current situation on their university (described above), but there are no links between satisfaction and country or region where a person comes from.
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3. Diversity in STEM Education 3.1. Introduction to diversity in STEM Education Background There is a study conducted in the form of an experiment on the topic of diversity in STEM. The people are asked to imagine a scientist in their head; the result is that most people imagine a man. Then they are being told this fact, that most people imagine a man; and they are asked to again imagine a day to day scientist; the result here is that now some people will imagine a woman, due to the information that they got before. Nevertheless, most people imagine a white person (and still most people imagine a man). This is showing that in peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minds, diversity is not reached yet. Along with this came up the discussion about what actually makes diversity and what is diverse. Therefore it is important to understand what areas and categories, people see diversity in.
Methodology This session started with a discussion about what diversity means to us. Shortly after that, the participants wrote down categories of what in their opinion makes people diverse from one another. This happened by using Post-its and silent individual work, followed up by clustering and grouping from the participants themselves for everything that was mentioned multiple times. As it is relevant to reflect on the ideas of other people also, we then had the chance to see by raise of hands, how many of the participants agree, that the mentioned category is part of what makes diversity. Afterwards, we brainstormed individually on what are the positive aspects of diversity. Anyone could read out their post it, and people that have something similar, they could add it to that category.
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Outcomes Figure 21 shows the number of people that agreed with each aspect being part of their personal definition of Diversity.
Figure 21. The number of people that agreed with each aspect being part of their personal definition of Diversity.
There was a big variety of aspects that are considered positive aspects of diversity by the participants. As mentioned above, these answers were then clustered by the participants themselves. In appendix X you can find the whole list of aspects that were mentioned.
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These following aspects are presented in the order from most to least often mentioned by the participants and the aspects are rephrased: • Getting different perspectives, solutions and ideas, • Learning from others and therefore expand your knowledge, • Being more likely to understand and be able to tackle a problem together, • Becoming more accepting and open-minded, • Separating the work by field of expertise and get a higher quality of work, • Helping to realize that embracing differences is a good thing, • Enhancing creativity, • Being more fun, • Becoming culturally enriched, • Developing respect, • Expanding flexibility, • Increasing the credibility of the work towards society.
3.2. Gender Diversity in STEM fields Background One of the criteria of diversity which was mentioned is gender diversity. In the following part, the focus is on the binary gender spectrum and of the diversity and discrimination based on gender (male and female). According to multiple studies, it was proven that there is not yet an equal amount of men and women in STEM professions. Furthermore, there is not a single country in the world, where men and women have the same opportunities and the same payment. Concerning this, there are also actions being taken from the European Union, which shows that this is a relevant topic:
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On the 20th of November 2017, the Commission adopted the 2017- 2019 Action Plan to tackle the gender pay gap evaluation report on the implementation of the Pay Transparency Recommendation: 1. equal economic independence of women and men, 2. equal pay for work of equal value, 3. equality in decision-making, 4. ending gender-based violence and 5. promoting gender equality beyond the EU.
Methodology The session started with a discussion on whether the participants think that gender equality in STEM is reached yet or not. This was followed up by a group work where the participants had to gather reasons for discrimination happening and negative effects of not reaching gender equality. The groups were separated by gender, meaning that there were two groups with only women in it and the other two groups with only men in it.
Outcomes In the discussion, the participants shared their own experiences form university and the gender balance ratio in their field of studies, and we found that ratio differed from person to person, and that they depend on many aspects: field of study, university and country. Some examples of the participants’ experiences regarding gender distribution are: • Electrical engineering at Technical University of Denmark, Denmark: 98% male, 2% female, • Electrical engineering at University of Zagreb, Croatia: 40-60% female, • Mechanical engineering at University of Zagreb, Croatia: less than 20% female, • Mechanical engineering at University of Belgrade, Serbia 60-50% female, • IT at National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute”, Ukraine: 99% male students.
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Some comments that were made, during the discussion on “Do you think gender equality in STEM is reached yet?“ are: • “Somewhat the equal number of women and men is achieved in faculties, but it is not achieved from the professors’ side, there is discrimination because people are thinking old-fashioned” (University of Belgrade, Serbia), • “For Internships in my country, there is discrimination because some people think that maybe guys are better with technical stuff and girls are better in paper related work. In studies, you can apply as a girl, but some professors are discriminating because they think that girls don’t know the subjects” (Riga Technical University, Latvia), • “A lot of jobs were empowering women, so I think in my country, men are discriminated” (Technical University of Denmark, Denmark), • “An example from my university is if both two guys and one girl raise their hands and then girl raises her hand last, they will let the students speak in the order guy-girl-guy because if girls waited until the end they might feel discriminated and won’t speak again.” (Riga Technical University, Latvia), • “We are approaching gender equality. At my university in biomedical engineering, there are now more girls than before.” (Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary), • “The teachers are old and not open-minded and therefore sometimes they are mistreating the females due to old traditions driven mindset.” (Spain), • “In my university and especially in my faculty, there are lots of teachers that are female, which helps women to feel more welcomed and comfortable” (Technical University of Madrid, Spain). Outcomes of the Group work are shown in Table A11 in the Appendix, and they represent the reasons for discrimination happening and the negative effects of not reaching gender equality, in participants’ opinions. Most notably, female participants stated they see the reasons behind discrimination to be due to stereotypes, prejudice, historical aspects and physical differences, and as negative effects, they identified lack of self-confidence, dependency, discrimination, lower employability and the wage gap. Male participants identified reasons for discrimination as cultural and generation gap, presence of stereotypes, outdated laws regarding pregnancy/ child support and lack of/not adequate representation of women in media.
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3.3. Problems of students with disabilities - is there discrimination from the perspective of their peers, professors and Universities? Background One type of diversity is the diversity based on physical abilities and disabilities, in particular, referring to the possibilities of the individuals. While researching for the BSE and background information it seemed that this topic wasn’t talked about enough in STEM Higher Education. In the session we strived to gather opinions to following questions related to the topic: • What kind of conditions and difficulties can these students have while studying STEM? • Are they discriminated by other students? • How the universities treat them in different parts of Europe?
Methodology The session started with short questions, in order for participants to get familiar with the different kinds of physical disabilities. After they mentioned all the types of disabilities that were planned to be talking during the session, we started with a discussion about how the students treat students with disabilities, do they know what difficulties they have and are they included in the social aspect of their university. Afterwards, we continued with a discussion regarding the universities, the infrastructure of the faculties and all the benefits and problems that they have. The session was ended with a world cafe about how the three stakeholders could help students with disabilities: Students, Professors and Universities.
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Outcomes The physical disabilities that the participants know of, are: • Inability to use arms/legs, • Blindness, • Deafness, • Dyslexia. When asked if they are aware of students with physical disabilities at their University, 14 out of 21 participants stated they have students with physical disabilities. Participants were then asked if those students are experiencing some sort of difficulties, and if yes, which those are. • Students in Wheelchairs: do they have access and possibilities to get around the whole campus, • Students with Dyslexia: do they get more time for the exams due to slower reading abilities. Afterwards, the students were invited to share personal experiences from their university of observing support for students with disabilities. • Technical University of Denmark: there is a student without hands and it’s hard to take notes, so the University pays another student to take notes for the student with a disability, • Riga Technical University: only the new campus is accessible for people with disabilities but the old campuses are not. There was a case where they changed the classroom where there was a student with a disability to grant the accessibility, • Technical University of Madrid: there is a student with disabilities and the professor didn’t understand multiple times what the student was saying and he had to wait until the end of the class. When asked if there are organizations at their universities which provide help to students with disabilities, none of the students was aware if those organizations exist and provide help to students in need. The input was gathered on what may pose a problem for a student with a physical disability to study in the STEM field. Students stated that there is a general opinion that STEM fields are harder, and for students with disabilities it’s even harder. Amongst participants present in the event, 13 out of 21 shared this opinion about STEM fields.
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The common opinion amongst participants was that whether the field of STEM will be impossible to study for a student with a disability, was that this depends on the field of studies, and that “there are some that are possible and some are not possible”, and this opinion was shared between 15 out of 21 participants. When asked if there are any benefits for students with a disability in terms of scholarships and specialized programmes, we only got input from two participants. This shows that most students are unaware if there is support provided to students with disabilities. To further understand the awareness of students on this matter, participants were asked if they are aware of the laws existing in their country supporting people with disabilities, and 9 out of 21 participants stated that they know that there are laws supporting disabled people. In the following part of the session, we wanted to examine how the universities are treating students with disabilities. When asked if their universities are wheelchair friendly, 12 out of 21 participants said that their university is wheelchair friendly, and those were: • Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary, • University of Novi Sad, Serbia, • Riga Technical University, Latvia, • Technical University of Madrid, Spain, • Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, • University of Belgrade, Serbia, • Graz University of Technology, Austria, • University of Lisbon, Portugal, • Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, • Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic. One of the most common opinions what poses a difficulty for students with disabilities was the laboratory work, and that especially for students in a wheelchair, it is not possible to work in laboratories. When asked if professors are providing help to students with disabilities during lectures, the input from participants was that professors are not providing additional help. After defining the problems which students with disabilities are experiencing, the next step was identifying solutions. This was done using World cafe methodology, and the outcomes can be found in Table 30.
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Table 30. Solutions to discussed problems proposed by the students using World Cafe Methodology
Table 1: What students can do • Start a mentor system and help students with disabilities according to their needs • Create a community • Helpful and respectful behaviour • Be inclusive • Organize training sessions for all students where they would learn how to help people with disabilities • Provide assistance in class • Spread awareness (leaflets, posters, starting NGOs, sports teams, social events) • Get informed about their disabilities • Organise competitions on engineering with the goal of finding solutions for problems students with disabilities are experiencing • Create an ideas wall where the students with disabilities can express their problems
Table 2: What professors can do
Table 3: What universities can do
• Attend training sessions to learn how to properly work with students with disabilities • Adjust lectures • Raise awareness about disabilities inside classes among students • Be aware of the new technologies • Provide students with disabilities with additional help and materials • Be flexible, empathetic and patient • Not separate students with disabilities from the group nor treat them differently • Offer additional classes • Raise awareness across universities • Share personal experiences regarding working with students with disabilities with other professors and university staff • Make materials available in digital form
• Pay for assistance to the students with disabilities • Make university buildings wheelchair friendly • Pay for special equipment • Patterns on the ground/ wall for blind people • Translate books to braille and/or make audiobooks • Provide mentors to students with disabilities • Provide psychological help to students with disabilities • Create personalized curricula for students with disabilities • Organize sign language workshops for students • Organize conferences for teachers • Offer scholarships for students with disabilities • Empower students with disabilities
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3.4. Diversity in personality types and learning styles - are professors inclusive in their lectures? Background In the first part of the session, the goal was to examine students’ opinions on whether differences in personality types of both professors and students have an impact on the learning process. The trait of extroversion-introversion is a central dimension of human personality theories. The terms introversion and extroversion were popularized by Carl Jung18. Extroversion tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behaviour, whereas introversion is manifested in more reserved and solitary behaviour. We wanted to research how a tendency toward introversion or extroversion influences classroom behaviour from both the students’ and professors’ perspectives, and whether or not professors are inclusive in their lectures for both types of personalities. The second part of the session aimed to test the professors’ ability to include students with different learning styles. This is a popular concept in psychology and education and it is intended to identify how people learn best. One of the most popular approaches is the VARK19 model of learning styles, which suggests that there are four main types of learners. These four key types are: • Visual learners, • Auditory learners, • Reading/writing learners, • Kinesthetic learners. The aim of this part of the session was to gather the students’ thoughts and experiences with different learning methodologies and to see if they feel like their professors are inclusive in their lectures.
“Jung’s Theory of Introvert and Extrovert Personalities”, Fractal enlightenment, accessed March 26, 2019, https://fractalenlightenment.com/31622/life/jungs-theory-of-introvert-and-extrovertpersonalities 19 “Introduction to VARK”, VARK, accessed March 23, 2019, http://vark-learn.com/introduction-to-vark/ 18
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Methodology In the first part of the session, facilitators firstly presented a theory on Jung’s theory on personality types and then the students were asked to identify themselves as either more extroverted or introverted. Students then brainstormed on the positive and negative side of having a tendency toward introversion or extroversion from both the students’ and professors’ sides in their respective groups. This activity was followed up by a discussion, led by a facilitator, in order to better understand the students’ opinions. The second part of the session aimed to gather input on different learning styles and opportunities students should have for reinforcing their personal learning style, as well as finding alternative solutions. For this purpose, the facilitator used the WARK theory, which was briefly introduced. Then, students were asked to divide into groups based on their most prominent learning style. In those groups, the students were asked to give input on the methodologies they find most useful for learning and memorising. Finally, numerical data were gathered on all of the proposed methodologies, in order to fully understand what is needed from professors to make them inclusive in their lectures with respect to all students’ learning styles.
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Outcomes Students identified their personality type according to Jungâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s theory (Figure 22).
Figure 22. Division of students based on their tendency towards introversion or extroversion
We gathered studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opinions that were based on their experience on which activities in the classroom are easier or harder to conduct for students with a tendency toward one or the other personality type. The results are presented in Table 31.
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Table 31. Activities students find to be easier or more difficult based on their personality type
Easy
Students with a tendency toward introversion
Students with a tendency toward extroversion
• Individual work • Writing • Staying focused • Staying quiet • Asking relevant questions • Searching for information • Doing individual tasks in the class • Writing their personal thoughts down • Doing written exams rather than oral • Much better feedback (standing up for themselves) • Asking for help • Being more interactive during classes • More comfortable in groups • More likely to start study groups • More keen to defend their rights and their classmates’ rights when there is an unfair situation • Stating personal opinions • Asking more questions • Organizing study groups
Hard • Teamwork • Public speaking • Asking for help • Taking opportunities • Oral exams • Building connections • To be understood • To argue • Presenting • Expressing thoughts and feelings • They listen less • More disturbing during class • More useless questions
After that, students were asked to present the advantages and disadvantages of professors that have a tendency toward one type or the other, and results are presented in Table 32.
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Table 32. Characteristics of professors based on their personality type
Advantages Professors with a tendency towards introversion
Professors with a tendency towards extroversion
• Capable of preparing good materials for class • Creative • Persistent • Good in specific questions • Getting to the point
• Afraid to reach out to students (worse communication) • Unable to express their thoughts • Not focusing on the outside world • Weaker connection with students • Demotivating students
Disadvantages • Afraid to reach out to students (worse communication) • Unable to express their thoughts • Not focusing on the outside world • Weaker connection with students • Demotivating students • Drifts off-topic (easily distracted) • Long explanations • Too intrusive
Students shared their opinions on the questions asked by the facilitator as follows: When asked “Are your professors adjustable to different personalities, or do they prefer to work using the same methods as everyone?”, some of the responses were: • “The professors that are more introverted tend to work with both introvert and extrovert students, while extroverted professors are not as flexible.” • “In my experience, professors are just who they are and they don’t adjust.” Only one out of 21 participants stated that they have professors that adjust to students, and that student stated that “[adjustment] is specific to my personal field, and professors have to be adjusted to students if you study robot-human interaction.” Another student provided an opinion that “Sometimes students ask stuff that is unreasonable and too much, at least it’s the situation with me.” When asked “How many of you had an experience of students adjusting to professors?”, all of the participants stated having this experience. That was followed-up by the question “Do you find it easy or hard to adjust to/in that situation?”, and 11 out of 21 students find it easy
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to adjust. One of the participants stated that “If the professor is really extrovert, it’s really hard for me to adjust, so I often just give my task to the group.”, and five students reported having a similar experience. Another participant stated that “There are professors that might say you’re stupid or didn’t you learn that somewhere already.“, and all the participants stated having experienced this in the past. There was also a statement saying their professors often say: “No questions during class, ask me everything after”, and nine out of 21 participants stated experiencing this. Regarding some positive practices, one participant stated: “When classes are interactive, I’m more confident to state my opinion and ask whatever I think I need.” Another student said: “I have a professor who doesn’t ask a specific person, but a row. I think this is a good method.” When asked “What do you think are other ways to ask a question except asking it?”, participants mentioned professors who write questions instead of asking orally. In the second part of the session, students identified their learning styles as mostly Visual, Kinesthetic or Reading/Writing. None of the students identified themselves as mostly Auditory type. The results from their input on methodologies needed to improve the quality of their learning are presented in Table 33. There were no students with an Auditory learning style, therefore there was no assessment of the needs of students who have a tendency toward Auditory learning.
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Table 33. Methodologies students require in their lectures and while studying, according to their learning style form VARK theory
Visual • Colourful pens • Sketches, images, diagrams • Workflows and schemes • Models • Videos • DIfferent typographies • Animations • Rewriting • Color-code
Kinesthetic • Use gestures to explain • Walking and learning • Using props in class • Gamification • Practice • Lab work • Study groups • Company visits • Outdoor classes • Active demonstrations
Reading/Writing • Relevant books, material resources recommendation • A precise, short text on slides • Color-coding text, post-its • References • Bullet points
We also gathered data regarding the number of participants who stated needs in class according to their learning style, and then, out of those who have that need, we gathered number (percentage) of professors who provide them with their needs. The comparison can be found in Table A12 in the Appendix. The things more than 80% of the students stated they need, no matter which learning type they identify themselves with, are: • Colourful pens used in class, • Sketches, pictures, diagrams, • Laboratory work, • Practical work, • A precise, short text on slides, • Bullet points, • Company visits, • Relevant books, material resources recommendation, • Workflows and schemes. The needs of students which more than 80% of professors offer are: • DIfferent letters in presentations, • Laboratory work, • Practical work, • Relevant books, material resources recommendation, • A precise, short text on slides, • Sketches, pictures, diagrams.
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However, things students need but less than 50% of professors provide them with are: • Colourful pens used in class, • Colour-coding, • Using props in class, • Company visits, • References, • Gamification.
3.5. Socioeconomic diversity - does it influence Higher Education and are students who work in parallel to their studies regulated in the STEM field? Background Is the socioeconomic status relevant for successful High Education? Is there discrimination between students from different socioeconomic classes? Are students from lower classes able to have the same education? These are the questions that are most commonly asked while talking about different problems regarding Higher Education. In this session, we wanted to get participants’ input on the following questions, and many others related to the socioeconomic status of students. We also wanted to examine what is the situation regarding students who are working while studying across different countries and universities and if there is a possible solution for those who have problems because of it.
Methodology The session started with a short discussion, which served as an introduction to socioeconomic diversity. Afterwards, participants were given a short questionnaire about the situation and opportunities that are in relation to socioeconomic diversity and they shared the answers.
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The next part of the session was a discussion regarding the concept of working while studying. The session ended with a discussion in four groups where we gathered more information on the situation in the participants’ countries.
Outcomes Participants defined socioeconomic diversity as a “diversity based on income and educational background”. The discussion opened with questions about the materialistic needs of the students. Students pointed out that “if you want to have proper studies you need a laptop, programs, books which can be expensive”, but also that at some universities, students can use the university’s computers. Out of 21 participants, 18 out of 21 participants said that in their universities books are provided for free, as well as computers and technology equipment needed. When asked “Have you seen that the professors use the power of giving favours to the upper classes students?”, one student stated that there are students who come from private high schools and the professors from university make harder exams because they want those students to suffer due to having had privileges before. When asked “Have you seen/experienced a case when someone gets a better grade because of power/money?”, some of the answers were as follows: • “It happens that teachers are being paid for a better grade.” • “Sometimes they don’t even have to pay, the professors have different treatment for those students.” • “These relationships of professors and students happen pretty often; many people take private lessons besides school, so they can afford some extra advantages.” • “In the National Technical University of Ukraine, if people come from student NGOs, they will get the opportunity to not attend classes by the professors due to their volunteering activities.” • “In Riga Technical University students from NGOs do not get any advantages. Nevertheless, the students from NGOs often know their rules and rights at the school, so they are willing to debate several aspects with the professors, which the professors don’t seem to like.” The results from the questionnaire can be found in Table A13. in the Appendix. The outcome of the questionnaire is that in most countries, education is free or there is a scholarship based on high grades. Discrimination against students from lower socioeconomic classes
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is not present or if it is present, it cannot be seen. Ten out of 21 participants said that in their universities, the books and other equipment is provided and the libraries are also available for use. The conclusion is that when it comes to financial reasons, it is not that hard to have higher education around Europe no matter the socioeconomic status. Following this, we examined what the situation is regarding students who work while studying, across different European universities. Out of 21 participants, 13 stated they have worked at some moment during studies. When asked if they had struggled to work while studying, some of the reasons they mentioned were: • No time issues, due to the small number of classes during that time, • Very hard to work, due to the mandatory attendance in the classes, • It is possible, but fully depends on personal time prioritisation. When asked if their University offer day(s) off, if needed for work, the answers were: • “If you work for the faculty yes, otherwise no.” • “At the University of Lisbon, you can have a worker-student status and take the exams months after. Faculties are flexible and it’s possible to work parallel to your studies.” When asked if the faculties are flexible regarding worker-student and taking exams later, only three out of 21 participants answered that their faculty is flexible. In the following part of the session, we asked all students the following questions: 1. What is the law situation in your country about students and working at the same time? 2. Does your university have any regulations regarding working and studying? 3. Are professors allowing students to skip classes due to working? The full answers can be found in the Appendix in section A.3.5. When it comes to the first question, the answers show that it differs for countries, and sometimes even different universities within the same country. Majority of participants (13 out of 17 responses) stated that they are allowed to work, which either fits into their regular schedule easily or with more difficulties, however there were participants who stated that working while being a student is either not allowed, professors will not let students miss out on classes, or that students automatically lose scholarships if they are working.
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Most of the participants also stated there are no regulations regarding working while being a student. Regarding the third question, whether professors are allowing students to skip classes due to working, three students said that professors allow it, five students stated that it is not allowed, three students stated that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s allowed to skip classes but laboratories are obligatory, three students stated that it depends on the professor, and additional three stated it depends on whether the job is in their field of study.
3.6. What do YOU want in future Universities? Background The last session of the event focused on the direct actions that the students can take to improve their university. For this, the participants were supposed to focus on creating an actual plan of steps to take to make a difference in their universities. It was important for the participants to be creative and develop their own ideas. To understand the current actions that are taken from BEST at the moment, there were presentations about the General EduID Timeline, Local Educational Involvement and Local Event on Education. The goal of showing this to participants (although some of them had heard of it before) was to show new opportunities and to build a stable attitude towards the Symposium they participated in.
Methodology Two presentations were held as an introduction, showing the projects and mechanisms we use in BEST to gather studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opinions about educational matters and disseminate it to Higher Education stakeholders, on international and local levels. The goal was to show participants potential of doing something that will impact their university on a local level, and also what possibilities there are to make the first steps towards changing European higher education. Following that, it was presented how to use SMART goals. Since this method was used before, participants were well-informed about how to use this method to define and plan
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their personal goals. For this session, the content team didn’t decide on the number of people in groups because the diversity (in age, cultural and ethnic background) was too wide and for the final session everyone could choose to work alone, in pairs or in bigger groups. Everyone could choose from their personal preferences.
Outcomes • Popularisation of men dominated studies within women This participant’s action plan was made up of a few steps that will help 3 groups of women enrolling in fields that are usually presented as “men’s fields”. The first step of helping the youngest group would be to listen to upcoming and newly-enrolled female students’ fears and concerns about what they study and what will be their future profession one day. Here, older students and alumni could help with their experiences. To help female students who are already studying in men’s fields”, University should find female engineers from relevant fields and pin them up with students during their studies. This could promote their motivation and help them set their own goals. Also, a university can help women like this with promoting daycare options for a woman with kids. • Organizing Local Event on Education to help to solve local problems This Local Event on Education (LEoE) would be organized in the local university in cooperation with other student associations. In the form of a survey, organizers would gather information about particular things students don’t like on classes and what are their suggestions for improvement. As the input is gathered, there would be an LEoE organized, together with professors participating. The main working method of this LEoE would be discussions on existing problems (based on a survey) and presenting some new teaching methods as a way of motivation both students and professors. • A popularization of different teaching methods among professors The goal of this action plan is to raise awareness among professors about different teaching methods. It’s necessary for this plan to make all student organisations from the University cooperate. All of them would organise a seminar that will have all professors and experts invited. On this seminar, new methodologies would be presented together with some good experiences from similar fields. This conference/seminar should contain workshops and presentations about skills that are needed in technical (or any other) field.
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• Popularisation of the importance of Soft skills The main idea behind this action plan was to inform University employees about the importance of soft skills. Except for the presentation of students’ wishes and needs, this plan contains the idea of ensuring the contact between University and soft skills trainers and psychologists that would help students to improve. There should be a group created. This group would be made of trainers, professors and students, in order to motivate everyone to implement some changes (like new methods, extra activities and similar). This group would be encouraged to share their experiences with other professors and to ask for feedback. Feedback could be given through communication with students’ representations and associations. Also, to make this function better, there should be a mailing list created for all the news and promotion. • Organizing Local Event on Education This participant focused on 4 problems of the higher educational system she’s familiar with: not enough practical work, professors’ ignorance towards students’ problems, pure lectures and low level of preparation for future jobs. For this occasion, the participant made an action plan for Local BEST Group Belgrade with realistic goals that could be achieved in the next year. The first step is organising LEoE on topics of students’ practice, future jobs, internships and length of studies in October of 2019. By this, not only all three stakeholders of BEST would be informed, but inputs gathered in this event would reach more people. On a post-event, the content team should write a report and identify the main problems of the majority of STEM students. By summing up possible solutions, baby steps in improvement would be made. In good communication with University rector, precise solutions should be defined and implemented. • Improvement of soft skills for students and professors This participant had an action plan for improving his University: by helping the selfdevelopment of students and improving teaching methods. The first point, helping the development of students, would be done by a mentorship program and study methods training from the first year of studies. Later, that could be improved with soft skills trainings. Improving teaching methods and after that, the whole education could be done with more training for professors and together with that an annual training plan. Big amount
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of improvement is based on feedback students would be able to give to the professors. Also, professors opinion is important, so there could be some workshops and/or panels for professors that would be also opened for students. • Hearing students’ thoughts and ideas for improvement This participant’s action plan consisted also from three steps: gathering the input from students (their attitude about the current situation in their studies), processing the results and publishing the results. From these data, some general opinions would be found out and the. The first step would be a simple Google Form that would be sent to a wider student population in Prague and also promoted on many sides. This form would give a wider input about students thoughts and attitudes on teaching methodologies, and also make a bigger interest of students in interactive lessons. After the results would be gathered and processed, outcomes could be sent to professors and personal approach would be offered to them in order to discuss the possible change. The conclusion of the session is that all action plans have something in common: students’ opinion is not heard in most of the Universities across Europe. Participants find students’ opinions important for the improvement of higher education in Europe and all of them suggested some kind of feedback. From what we have seen in this session, students are willing to work on the improvement but they need tools for their voice to be heard.
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4. Conclusion BEST Symposium on Education 2018 Lisbon had three main topics: skills needed in STEM professions, Pedagogy in STEM education and Diversity in STEM education, all of which are quite relevant in current European panorama. The event gathered 21 students from different European countries, who had the opportunity to share their opinions and create innovative solutions to identified problems for the above-mentioned topics. The sessions were facilitated by the Content team, consisting of students from BEST, and our educational partners. Participantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opinions are presented in the respective segments of this report, together with the data analysis conducted by the Content team, making studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; voices heard. The outcomes of the sessions should serve as a starting point for improving existing and creating new policies in STEM education by the relevant Higher Education stakeholders and decision-makers, on both European and the local level, through actions which should be taken in individual universities and countries. Thank you to the participants of BSE 2018 Lisbon for all the innovative ideas and concepts mentioned in the event, as there are now many actions which can be taken in order for them to be implemented. We are glad that we got the opportunity to get the input from this diverse group of students from all over Europe to get many different opinions, perspectives and ideas. We sincerely hope that these opinions will have a higher reach and impact, and that they will be analysed, evaluated and implemented by the relevant actors in STEM Education.
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5. Appendix A.1.1. Are pedagogical skills helpful in STEM careers? Table A1. Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; grading of the importance of the list of pedagogical skills, where the number represents the number of participants out of 21.
Skills
Very low Low Average Significant significance significance significance
Very significant
No opinion
Time Management
-
-
2
12
7
-
Presentation Skills
-
-
-
7
14
-
Communication Skills
-
-
-
4
17
-
Conflict Management
-
-
13
4
4
-
Emotional Intelligence
-
2
4
8
7
-
Patience
-
-
6
10
5
-
Stress Management
-
2
11
5
3
-
Methodology
-
2
5
8
6
-
Feedback
-
1
3
9
8
-
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Skills
Very low Low Average Significant significance significance significance
Very significant
No opinion
Leadership skills
-
-
4
14
3
-
Teamwork
-
-
7
6
8
-
Flexibility
-
-
2
12
7
-
Project Management
-
-
4
12
5
-
Proactiveness
-
1
7
10
3
-
Creative Thinking
-
3
7
7
4
-
Computer Literacy
1
4
7
8
1
-
Improvisation
1
3
8
7
2
-
Language Skills
1
3
6
8
3
-
Emotional Awareness
-
2
5
5
8
1
Fast Reaction
1
3
7
7
2
1
Ability to recognize potential in others
-
2
6
9
4
-
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Technological knowledge
1
2
4
6
8
-
Credibility
1
3
7
7
2
1
Crisis Management
-
1
8
11
1
-
Engagement
-
1
7
6
7
-
Consistent
-
2
6
9
4
-
The big picture inside and outside the classroom
-
-
4
7
10
-
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A.1.2. Soft Skills - are they needed in STEM education? Table A2. The role of the most important communication skills in higher education
Mentoring/ Coaching
Round 1 What are the most important communication skills for the success of this soft skill?
Round 2 How can teachers help master these communication skills in the classroom?
Round 3 How can students master these skills outside the classroom?
Round 4 What are the results, professionally, of having these skills developed and/or the consequences of not developing them?
• Teamwork • Patience • Leadership • Empathy • Project management • Listening • Receiving and giving feedback • Being clear when explaining • Motivating • Adapting conversations to situations
• Conduct group work • Include big projects (longterm) for students to practice patience • Discussion sessions • Mixed projects with students from different years of study (for example 1.5 year students with 2nd-year students) • Encourage feedback from students to each other on individual projects
• Through difficult projects where they need to be autonomous • Challenging debates about their ideas • Volunteer, for example in a student organization • Go on internships • Take part in group sports • Join competitions
• Through these developed skills you will have higher chances to get a better position in a company • In case they are not developed it might lead to becoming a slow learning employee, coordinator reaches their full potential, and it can lead to stress • Spreading your vision • Building a trust relationship • Spreading your vision7 • Spreading your vision
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Mentoring/ Coaching
Selfmotivation/ perseverance:
• Goal setting • Having a repetitive phrase • Telling yourself positive things • Highlighting the positive aspects to yourself • Be kind to yourself • Communicate your goals to yourself • Make time for your own thoughts
• Including questionnaires, asking the students at the end of the class for their opinion • Give specific examples to what is being explained • Have good planning of the lecture • Be creative in the activities proposed in class • Be serious or make jokes depending on the situation • Use good body language • Continuous positive feedback • Trigger motivation through attractive topics in class • Be adaptable and give more chances to complete a task • Point out the good aspects of students’ work, and provide students with ways to improve • Give compliments; there is always something good in someone’s work
• Building a trust relationship • Helping reach others’ emotional fulfilment • Broadening your own knowledge
• Practice in front of the mirror, positive encouragement • Create a checklist of daily tasks for yourself (to be aware of what you already have done) • Create a Wishlist (similar to goals setting, schedules and a general plan) • Practice positive thinking through meditation • Doing individual sports
• What effect is there through having these skills developed: • a constantly growing career • less stress • authority • comfort when expressing and defending yourself (needs, ambitions, etc.) • faster and easier communication with your peers • more selfconfidence and less fear of failure because of expertise
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Round 1 What are the most important communication skills for the success of this soft skill?
Round 2 How can teachers help master these communication skills in the classroom?
Selfmotivation/ perseverance:
Teamwork:
• Flexibility and adaptability • Feedback • Empathy and emotional awareness • Team planning • Facilitation • Conflict solving • Giving and receiving feedback • Respect the opinion of other members
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• Assign teamwork based projects and provide feedback • Assign a leader who has more information about the project • Provide the possibility to reach out to the professor • Little teams in the classroom
Round 3 How can students master these skills outside the classroom?
Round 4 What are the results, professionally, of having these skills developed and/or the consequences of not developing them?
• Do activities that put you out of your comfort zone • Be part of an NGO • Fully commit to practice; if you fail, try again (and again…) • Make time for the things you are passionate about • Set personal goals • Pinpoint your success • Communicate with other people • Volunteer for different activities and projects • Be monitor/ tutor for a camp • Participate in BEST events • Play team sports
• more willingness to achieve goals • Not having these skills developed: • Getting stuck • Not moving forward
• What effect is there through having these skills developed: • Minimization of conflicts and mitigate them • Being more comfortable during teamwork • Being able to understand people’s needs and problems and be able to help them
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• Self-control and tolerance → don’t lose your access to the group • Adapt your voice tone to the situation
Teamwork:
• Surveys among group members to feedback each other • Facilitate group discussion • Give students the opportunity to do teamwork • Provide feedback on students’ presentations
• Listen to people from different backgrounds and different motivations • Work with others • Teach activities to others • Set a daily routine
• Being able to adapt to any unexpected situations • Being able to divide the work so everyone does the work that suits them the best and the time is used effectively; this might lead to a happier team which will also increase its efficiency • Anything that can be improved will be improved • People will be comfortable expressing their opinion • Great atmosphere at work • The success of the project teams • What effect is there through not having this skills developed: • Having problems to be comfortable in the team
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Customer relationship:
Round 1 What are the most important communication skills for the success of this soft skill?
Round 2 How can teachers help master these communication skills in the classroom?
Round 3 How can students master these skills outside the classroom?
Round 4 What are the results, professionally, of having these skills developed and/or the consequences of not developing them?
• Active listening and asking the right questions at the right time • Creating a comfortable atmosphere and build trust • Adapting the voice and language • Asking for feedback • Listening • Adapting the language (vocabulary, age group of customers, social background, … ) • Being a good speaker (convincing, good presenter, …) • Receiving feedback • Asking the right questions
• Simulate a face-to-face conversation • Set an example • Show good examples • Assign projects with stakeholders • Set an example and teach with contrast • Videos of good and bad examples • Make a presentation summarizing skills, tips and things to avoid • Show the consequences of good and bad feedback
• Practical experience through for example a job • Speak with different people • Get out of your comfort zone • Join discussions or debate clubs • Join an NGO • Read (open/ expands vocabulary) • Get into a group of people • Ask the wrong questions many times until the right ones happen • Put yourself into speaking and presenting situations • Practice selfreflection (through e.g. diary, meditation)
• What effect is there through having these skills developed: • Customer satisfaction • Improvement in customer service • Successful project and effective work • Skills and knowledge are applicable to everyday life • What effect is there through not having these skills developed: • Customers will choose other people that give them emotional satisfaction, even if the product is worse • Risk of losing a job • Risk of losing customers • Gaining a bad reputation
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• Giving feedback • Giving clear instructions • Motivating and encouraging others • Receiving feedback • Facilitation skills • Summarizing • Good timing of emotional expressions • Empowering speaker
Leadership/ Coordination:
• Ask for feedback • Give feedback and be an example for students • Give clear instructions • Visualize instructions • Keep instructions short and simple • Encourage and motivate students • Appreciating the students work • Show teachers own motivation • Provide students with access to articles, books, etc. and ask for essays and summaries
• Participate in activities and events of BEST • Gain a deeper knowledge about the subject • Explain problems to friends and family • Work with children • Join a student organization • Do an internship or work placement • Volunteer (regular or at camps/ projects) • Take part in sport activity • Participate in leadership workshops
• What effect is there through having these skills developed: • Improvement of your work • Fast understanding and aiming for perfection • Motivated and confident people leads to high efficiency • Good at understanding others • High level of productivity • High level of proactivity • Happy to be at a workplace • What effect is there through not having these skills developed: • Setbacks and delays which lead to low improvement • A lot of mistakes in the work • Demotivated people which can lead to dissatisfaction and a bad atmosphere • Discussions not having valuable outcomes • Not being able to compromise
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Round 1 What are the most important communication skills for the success of this soft skill?
Round 2 How can teachers help master these communication skills in the classroom?
Leadership/ Coordination:
Round 5: Conclusions and Presentation preparation You need : • Flexibility and adaptability • Respect and listening • Feedback • Empathy • Facilitation • Conflict solving
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Round 3 How can students master these skills outside the classroom?
Round 4 What are the results, professionally, of having these skills developed and/or the consequences of not developing them? • Many conflicts within the team • Wasted time due to low productivity • Laziness within the whole team
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Figure 23. Students’ opinions on the statement “Communication skills are important in STEM” Table A3. Students’ estimation of how many times they have experience formal and deliberate development of communication skills in curriculum
Amount of times experienced
0
1
2
3
4
5
10
100
Number of students who gave that answer
3
3
2
6
2
1
3
1
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Table A4. Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opinions on needs for developing their levels of soft skills
Skills
Need to improve it a lot
Need to improve
Need to improve a slightly
No need to improve at all
Teamwork
2
7
11
1
Leadership/ Coordination
6
8
5
2
Mentoring/ Coaching
9
7
5
0
Customer relationship
3
12
6
0
Selfmotivation/ perseverance
9
7
3
2
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Table A4. Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opinions on needs for developing their levels of soft skills
Need to improve
Need to improve a slightly
No need to improve at all
3
8
6
4
Feedback (Teamwork)
3
9
8
1
Empathy (Teamwork)
3
6
9
3
Facilitation (Teamwork)
5
5
10
1
Conflict solving (Teamwork)
2
9
10
0
Respect (Teamwork)
2
2
8
9
Giving & receiving feedback (Leadership /Coordination & Mentoring/ Coaching)
4
4
13
0
Motivate others (Leadership /Coordination)
4
11
5
1
Proactivity (Leadership /Coordination)
4
5
8
4
Good communication (Mentoring/Coaching)
3
6
11
1
Good listening (Customer relationship)
2
5
11
3
Skills
Need to improve it a lot
Flexibility (Teamwork)
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Need to improve
Need to improve a slightly
No need to improve at all
3
6
6
6
2
9
10
0
8
7
4
2
6
9
4
2
6
6
8
1
Skills
Need to improve it a lot
Create a comfortable atmosphere (Customer relationship) Set a good example (Customer relationship) Be kind to yourself (Self-motivation / perseverance) Focus on positive things (Self-motivation / perseverance) Make time for self (Self-motivation / perseverance)
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A.1.4. Skills needed in Industry 4.0 Table A6. The number of students per group who find proposed skills relevant for their future jobs.
Who proposed skills
Skills proposed
Group 1: IT and computer sciences
Basic knowledge of operating system Using browsers Using MS office/ docs Using email Using social networks (for PR) Connecting of companies Cloud English skills Writing reports Using Linux and other programs Making compilers (translating from one language to another) More technical English language Computer networking Graphics editors Software design patterns Methodology for HCI (human-computer interaction) Web development Knowledge of data Software project management Computer hardware
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
7/7 7/7 7/7 7/7 5/7 6/7 7/7 7/7 7/7 7/7
4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 2/4 3/4 3/4 4/4 4/4 4/4
4/4 4/4 4/4/ 4/4 0/4 3/4 2/4 4/4 4/4 4/4
6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 5/6 3/6 5/6 6/6 6/6 0/6
2/7
0/4
0/4
0/6
7/7 6/7 6/7 6/7
4/4 1/4 3/4 0/4
4/4 0/4 0/4 0/4
6/6 1/6 4/6 0/6
7/7
0/4
1/4
2/6
7/7 7/7 7/7 6/7
0/4 0/4 1/4 3/4
0/4 0/4 2/4 2/4
0/6 0/6 1/6 4/6
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Who proposed skills
Group 2: Natural sciences and biomedical engineering
Group 3: Electrical engineering and energetics
Skills proposed Mathematics Physics Chemistry Biology Mathlab Autocad Researching and reading articles Imaging technology (medical) Use of sensors Analyzing devices Animal surgery Laboratory safety Electrical circuits Data analysis Statistics Reverse cinematics Computer vision (3D) BLC learning Simulating Distributed Real-time control Database managing (before data analysis) Space control (making model with differentials) Environmental system analysis tools
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Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
7/7 4/7 2/7 0/7 6/7 3/7 7/7 0/7 2/7 0/7 0/7 1/7 0/7 7/7 6/7 0/7 5/7 0/7 2/7 1/7
4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 3/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 2/4 4/4 1/4 4/4 4/4 1/4 3/4 0/4 0/4 1/4
4/4 3/4 3/4 1/4 4/4 0/4 4/4 1/4 3/4 1/4 0/4 1/4 3/4 3/4 4/4 1/4 1/4 2/4 3/4 2/4
6/6 6/6 4/6 0/6 3/6 6/6 5/6 0/6 4/6 0/6 0/6 1/6 1/6 6/6 5/6 1/6 2/6 1/6 3/6 0/6
7/7
4/4
4/4
5/6
0/7
2/4
2/4
0/6
0/7
0/4
1/4
0/6
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Group 4: Civil, industrial and mechanical engineering
Programming languages Multidisciplinary work Work safety Visuals Graphics knowledge (colouring design, etc.) 3D modelling Technical documentation Technical reading Norms, standards Brainstorming techniques Benchmarking Budget management Materials knowledge Calculations Structure analysis Sustainability (basic) Ergonomics
7/7 7/7 4/7 0/7
4/4 4/4 0/4 0/4
111 4/4 2/4 0/4
6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6
5/7
0/4
0/4
1/6
6/7 5/7 6/7 2/7 6/7 6/7 6/7 3/7 3/7 0/7 1/7 3/7
3/4 4/4 2/4 2/4 3/4 2/4 4/4 4/4 4/4 1/4 2/4 3/4
0/4 2/4 2/4 1/4 2/4 2/4 2/4 3/4 2/4 0/4 2/4 0/4
6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 5/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 6/6 3/6
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A.1.5. Self-employment skills - what are they, and how can STEM students gain them? Table A7. Average grades given by students for proposed skills needed in entrepreneurship, for three groups individually and for all students combined, on the importance, possession of the skill and ratio of importance and possession, respectively. Group 1 Skills needed in entrepreneurship
Group 2
Group 3
All students
Impor tance
Posse ssion
Ratio
Impor tance
Posse ssion
Ratio
Impor tance
Posse ssion
Ratio
Impor tance
Posse ssion
Ratio
Discipline
4.8
3.4
0.7
4.4
3.4
0.8
4.5
3.8
0.8
4.0
3.5
0.9
Commitment and creating habits
4.1
3.1
0.8
4.4
3.4
0.8
4.5
3.5
0.8
3.9
3.3
0.9
Be able to endure hardships
4.5
3.4
0.8
4.0
3.8
0.9
4.3
3.8
0.9
3.7
3.6
1.0
Work restlessly
3.1
3.3
1.0
3.2
2.8
0.9
3.3
2.3
0.7
3.1
2.5
0.8
Fundraising skills (for an initial investment)
3.6
2.6
0.7
4.6
2.4
0.5
4.5
2.5
0.6
3.7
2.6
0.7
Being eclectic
3.9
3.6
0.9
3.8
3.4
0.9
4.5
3.5
0.8
3.8
3.3
0.9
Presentation skills
4.3
3.4
0.8
4.4
3.2
0.7
5.0
4.0
0.8
4.0
3.4
0.8
Crisis management
3.9
3.3
0.8
3.7
3.1
0.8
4.3
3.3
0.8
3.5
3.1
0.9
Time management
4.5
3.6
0.8
4.3
3.2
0.7
4.5
3.8
0.8
4.0
3.4
0.9
Self-criticism
4.1
3.5
0.8
3.8
3.6
0.9
4.0
4.0
1.0
3.6
3.5
1.0
Ability to recognize like-minded people
3.9
3.5
0.9
3.8
3.3
0.9
3.8
3.3
0.9
3.5
3.1
0.9
Teamwork
4.0
4.1
1.0
4.1
3.8
0.9
4.3
4.3
1.0
4.0
3.6
0.9
Grants and fundraising
3.5
2.5
0.7
4.2
2.6
0.6
4.5
3.5
0.8
3.5
2.8
0.8
Networking
4.5
3.0
0.7
4.2
3.0
0.7
4.5
3.3
0.7
3.7
3.3
0.9
Decision making
4.6
2.9
0.6
4.7
3.0
0.6
3.8
3.3
0.9
3.7
3.2
0.9
Leadership
4.3
3.8
0.9
4.2
2.6
0.6
4.0
3.0
0.8
3.9
3.0
0.8
Flexibility
4.5
3.8
0.8
3.9
4.0
1.0
4.0
3.3
0.8
3.7
3.6
1.0
Good at estimating the financial value
4.1
2.9
0.7
3.9
2.6
0.7
3.3
2.0
0.6
3.2
2.6
0.8
Adaptability
4.6
4.0
0.9
4.1
4.2
1.0
4.3
3.5
0.8
4.0
3.8
1.0
Persuasion
4.3
3.0
0.7
3.9
3.0
0.8
4.3
3.5
0.8
3.5
3.2
0.9
Being a motivator
4.4
3.5
0.8
4.4
3.6
0.8
4.0
3.5
0.9
3.9
3.5
0.9
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Delegation
3.8
2.9
0.8
4.0
3.0
0.8
4.3
4.0
0.9
3.5
3.2
0.9
Assertive communication
3.5
3.3
0.9
3.8
2.9
0.8
3.8
3.5
0.9
3.4
3.0
0.9
Persistence
4.3
4.0
0.9
4.8
3.6
0.7
4.0
3.5
0.9
4.1
3.5
0.8
Budget management
4.1
3.3
0.8
4.3
3.0
0.7
4.0
2.8
0.7
3.6
3.0
0.8
Risk management
4.6
3.3
0.7
3.9
3.0
0.8
4.3
3.0
0.7
3.5
3.2
0.9
Responsibility
4.4
3.8
0.9
4.2
4.0
0.9
4.3
3.8
0.9
3.9
3.7
1.0
Creativity
4.0
3.4
0.8
3.7
3.3
0.9
4.0
4.3
1.1
3.6
3.3
0.9
Stress management
4.3
3.0
0.7
4.0
3.2
0.8
4.5
3.5
0.8
3.6
3.2
0.9
Communication skills
4.1
3.4
0.8
4.2
3.3
0.8
4.5
4.3
0.9
3.9
3.4
0.9
Legal knowledge
3.9
1.8
0.5
3.8
2.0
0.5
4.3
2.8
0.6
3.0
2.4
0.8
Business model tools
4.1
2.0
0.5
3.8
2.0
0.5
4.0
4.0
1.0
3.0
2.9
0.9
Marketing skills
4.5
3.0
0.7
3.6
2.3
0.6
3.0
1.8
0.6
3.1
2.7
0.9
Target customer group
4.4
3.3
0.7
10.7
2.8
0.3
4.3
2.0
0.5
3.3
2.8
0.8
Accounting
3.5
2.1
0.6
8.5
2.0
0.2
3.0
1.5
0.5
2.7
2.1
0.8
Field knowledge, know what you are doing
4.4
3.8
0.9
4.4
3.6
0.8
4.3
2.5
0.6
3.9
3.2
0.8
Benchmarking
3.6
3.1
0.9
3.8
2.7
0.7
3.3
4.0
1.2
3.2
3.0
0.9
IT skills
2.8
4.1
1.5
2.6
3.3
1.3
4.0
3.5
0.9
3.2
2.9
0.9
Branding
4.0
3.0
0.8
3.8
2.9
0.8
3.8
1.5
0.4
3.4
2.7
0.8
Research on competition
4.1
3.3
0.8
3.9
3.3
0.9
4.3
4.0
0.9
3.5
3.4
1.0
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Table A8. Information where students could learn about entrepreneurship in their university or country, provided by the participants.
University, Country
Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Riga Technical University, Latvia
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Description of available opportunities • There is a program called “Ideas” (https://www.ideas.upv.es/), similar to a startup accelerator, where you can build your own startup and take many courses on entrepreneurship. They regularly have their accelerator programmes. • It is not a part of students’ curriculum, but it belongs to the University, and is free of charge. • They have also been organizing contests in recent years; They inform University students via email on a regular basis. • The programme accepts all students who want to start a startup, and they also provide places for work. • There are several courses for entrepreneurship in the regular curriculum. • Students get financial backup to develop their potential products. • The situation in Denmark is very optimal for support to startups. • Additionally, extracurricular programs can easily be found. • There is no such programme in the university curriculum. • Many programmes are being promoted to students, where one can take classes on entrepreneurship. • There is a possibility of getting a certain number of ECTS credits through those classes. Some of the things that are being taught include: learning about the process of starting your own business, where and how to get funding, how to evaluate a business idea, creating SWOT analysis, etc. • There are also incubators, where one can develop business ideas. In the middle of the programme, there is a “pitch” for the selection of better ideas, and a chance to get funding opportunities through grants. • There is also the Laboratory designed with necessary equipment (such as laser cutters), which students can use for free or very low price. Following that, there is a “48 hours garage”, a workshop where students can work on their idea, in order to come up with a product or an actual plan.
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Riga Technical University, Latvia
Technical University of Madrid, Spain
University of Porto, Portugal
University of Belgrade, Serbia
• The whole country of Latvia is trying to empower students in entrepreneurship. • There is a students’ representative from University, who is in charge of informing students through emails and University also shares promotional posters of these opportunities, but the overall feeling is that it does not actually reach students. • There is a contest type of programme, which also has classes on it. The winners of the contest get to create their startup idea, and usually, have lots of success afterwards. • It is very difficult to be accepted to the contest, because the application process requires you to already have and write your business idea, even though students only learn about it if they are accepted. • There is a programme for Masters’ studies which is very much entrepreneurship-based. In classes, students are taught risk and strategic management, as well as technical knowledge needed to understand what it means to be an entrepreneur. • There is also a possibility to select entrepreneurship project, as a thesis since the University of Porto has partnerships with incubators. • There are no classes which would support entrepreneurship. • There are programmes such as extra-curricular competitions, even for high schoolers, where students can pitch their business idea to judges, and winners go to a regional competition.
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A.2.1. Active Learning and its role in Higher Education Table A9. The frequency of types of active learning in previous experiences of surveyed students
Question
Never
Rarely
Occasionally
Very frequently
Pure lecture (only presenting/ monologue) - How many times have you experienced it?
0
1
6
14
Questioning lectures (presenting style including some questions for the students to answer) - How many times have you experienced it?
0
1
15
5
Interactive lectures/Micro active learning - How many times have you experienced it?
4
13
3
1
Project-based learning - How many times have you experienced it?
9
7
5
0
Inquiry-based learning - How many times have you experienced it?
6
11
4
0
Flipped classroom - How many times have you experienced it?
10
10
0
1
In-class flip - How many times have you experienced it?
19
2
0
0
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A.2.2. What are the best questions to ask in classes? Table A10. Creative methodologies used by professors which participants experienced in classrooms
University name, Country
University of Zagreb, Croatia
Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Riga Technical University, Latvia
Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain
Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Teaching methods • Once we got random machines and had to fully disassemble it and sort it all apart. • When they can’t show things directly, an alternative is also using a video. It depends on how the teacher interacts with the video; if he doesn’t, it’s useless, but if he does it can be good Some professors kept the interactive questions and voting, but doing so in an anonymous way was the best; sometimes we’d also do it in teams, the professor would keep track of the score on the board, and the team that gets the most answers right would get a reward. I have one teacher who, when notices the students lost their focus, only then asks questions. Those questions are not important and are just used to regain students’ attention and focus. We had a course about how to become a good teacher; the whole course was based on flipped classroom. We also had a teacher that asked questions at the beginning of the lecture about the previous lecture, so we’d review the important things from the previous class, and the professor would make students be more awake. In lectures, the teacher makes students guess what are the properties of some material, and students really learn from it. When it comes to exercises, the professor would give examples that are physical and within the room, which was always very helpful.
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University name, Country
Teaching methods
National Technical I had a very cool economics teacher, who’d always ask very easy University of Ukraine “Igor questions, bring examples from real life and engage students Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic through humour. Institute”, Ukraine • Out of 2.5 hours long class of Economics, the professor would have a 1 hour case study, following our presentations, and, at University of Porto, the end of the class, we’d have 30 minute exam. • We had construction site and company visits, but they were Portugal useless, because those institutions didn’t know what we were learning. University of Belgrade, Serbia
During the last year of studies, we had visits to construction sites, which were very interesting and useful.
National Technical University of Athens, Greece
In classroom, one teacher used to bring equipment and then experimented in front of us.
Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic
People from a company come to class, the teacher knows the company and invites them; but there needs to be connection between the company and the teacher so that the company knows what students are currently studying.
A.3.1. Diversity in STEM Education Results on FC on post-its: (“-” stands for a new stack of post-its; “;” stands for new post-its; the participants were asked to add there post its when they think it is similar to something else; so they put in on top of each other) • More credibility from society, • Become more active in social exclusion problems and more sensible, • Flexibility, • Develop respect, • Open-minded people, • Cultural enrichment, Get to know other cultures • It’s more fun;
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Not boring • Enhances creativity; It creates a positive and creative working atmosphere • Helps us realize that we need to embrace the differences (we are all humans and persons); Leaving comfort zone • People can learn acceptance; Open minded; It can change our perception/ promote openness; Foster open-mindedness; Open mindedness • Find more different opinions; Different points of view • People can have different roles in a team (and they can feel good about it); Diverse working ethics; Accomplish different tasks; All the work gets done (not everyone can be directors, professors etc.) • Better understanding (of the matter/ deeper understanding, more thoughts); More/ better collective specific knowledge (technical); Expand knowledge; You can widen your view of the world and your knowledge; Different ways to face a problem • More elaborate solutions; More approaches to come up with solutions; Wider vision (different points of view together); Different ideas/ approaches; Innovate ideas for problems; Different perspectives/ points of view; Different points of view lead to better solutions; Different perspectives; See things from different perspectives; Different opinions and more methods lead to better result; Different point of view -> better problem solving; Wider spectrum of ideas; Develop different points of view, Not just oneself’s opinion; Deeper analysis of the problems, more creative solutions; More various approaches to solving problems; Potential to create different ideas;
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Exchange of points of view; More versatile; Standard solutions • Expand knowledge; Opportunity to learn new things (hobbies, study methods, cuisine… -> you can become a more rounded person); Opportunity to learn from different cultures, views, mindsets, …; Lean through the differences; You can learn from others and improve yourself; You can develop yourself
A.3.2. Gender Diversity in STEM fields Table A11. Reasons for discrimination and negative effects of not reaching gender equality, in participants’ opinions
Group 1 (only women)
Group 2 (only men)
BSE Lisbon 2018
Reasons for discrimination
Negative effects of discrimination
• Stereotypes • Historical aspects • Being pregnant and more emotional • Minority discrimination • Familiarity/ similarity preference • Lack of physical strength
• Lack of self-confidence • Fear of discrimination • Hard to find a job • Lack of generation of creative solutions • Possibility of getting sued and loss of credibility (for companies) • Isolation
• Culture generation gap • Stereotypes (both ways) • Outdated laws in term of pregnancy support • Lack of exposure of women in today’s culture
• Not pursuing some dreams • Less representative decisions • Lack of validation of the work • Missed opportunities
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Group 3 (only women)
Group 4 (only men)
• Historical background (boy/ girl jobs; boys - cars; girls - barbies) • Possibility of pregnancy • Positive discrimination • Physical differences • Work in conservative countries (as going there for a job as a representative from your country) • Media representation • Education • Stereotypes • Sexuality of the authority/ customer • Society - media • Lack of confidence in girls • Stereotypical physical abilities • Pregnancy • Assumption of being more emotional (hormones) • Closed circle • Traditional upbringing
• Narrow perspective • Low self esteem, loss of motivation • Wage gap • Losing a valuable employee • Stereotypical world • Dependency
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A.3.4. Diversity in personality types and learning styles - are professors inclusive in their lectures? Table A12. Comparative analysis between what students need in class and what professors are providing them with
Methodologies students need from professors in class Colourful pens used in class Sketches, pictures, diagrams Workflows and schemes Models (practical, physical, simulations) Videos DIfferent letters in presentations Bullet points Colour-coding Usage of gestures Using props in class Gamification Outdoor classes Company visits Laboratory work Practical work Relevant books, material resources recommendation A precise, short text on slides References
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Number of students that require respective methodology (out of 21) 21 21 18 10 16 13 20 13 15 16 8 7 19 21 21
Percentage of their professors who use it 43 % 81 % 61 % 50 % 56 % 100 % 55 % 38 % 53 % 38 % 13 % 0% 32 % 100 % 100 %
18
100 %
21 6
90 % 33 %
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A.3.5. Socioeconomic diversity - does it influence Higher Education and are students who work in parallel to their studies regulated in the STEM field? Table A13. Students’ answers from the questionnaire.
Country
Are they able to get all the books and equipment for university work?
Is financial pressure (that Have you is due to the witnessed necessary discrimination technology by the needed for professors lectures) towards making students from students different from lower socioeconomic socioeconomic statuses? status unable If yes, give to follow example. lectures? If yes, in which way?
No.
All the equipment is provided for everyone.
No, I haven’t noticed any difficulties for them.
No, I haven’t witnessed this.
No.
Only a few things need to be bought but they are cheap.
Not at all.
No.
We don’t usually use expensive books. They can be borrowed from the library.
they can borrow materials, but the amount of work makes them want to have their own.
No, I haven’t witnessed this.
Are students who can’t afford Are they education discriminated able to get by other it and is it students? the same quality?
Czech Republic
Education is free for everyone.
Hungary
High education is free if you have good grades.
Spain (Valencia)
Usually, students They need to with high make a huge effort although income go with they receive those of similar a scholarship background, but I because it is not would not say it is enough. discrimination.
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Ukraine
Yes. All the students can study for free if they pass the exams with high grades.
No, we are very friendly.
Yes, we have libraries with computers.
No.
Yes, students from students associations ( who work for the faculty) receive a lot of preference.
Sweden
Education is free and we get paid. Everyone can afford it.
No.
They can use computers and borrow books from the library.
No.
No.
Portugal
They can work to pay for the studies and apply for scholarships. The quality is the same.
No, these students are not discriminated.
Yes.
You only need a pen and paper to take notes. PCs and books are available in libraries.
No, teachers don’t even know it.
Latvia
Yes, if their high school grades are good enough to get into a budget space. Also, many scholarships are available.
I haven’t seen it.
Mostly yes but sometimes a laptop is very needed, so they need to have one.
No.
No.
Greece
Universities are free for everyone.
Not really.
Everything is free.
Everything is provided during lectures.
No.
Spain (Madrid)
Books and Some of them equipment are can be granted not provided so scholarships so I don’t really think maybe they can they can afford so get them by education, same applying for a quality as others scholarship or from the library
No
No
Denmark
Every line of education is free but expenses for housing, food, etc. might force students to work on a side which can affect their studies.
No.
No.
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Usually no. You can’t tell their economic background most of the time.
Not everyone can/will buy the books so they forward them usually.
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Russia
Education is free.
We all have the same.
We all have the same.
No.
No.
Austria
University is free.
No.
Yes.
No.
No.
Serbia (Novi Sad)
They can get the same education, however, students with money have it easier with technologies and private classes.
I haven’t seen it.
You can get, however, it is more timeconsuming.
I think it exists but it is not too dormitory.
No.
Croatia
Yes, if they work just as hard as the regular students so they don’t fail a year( education is free).
No.
Most of it. They can borrow books and computers in libraries and there is economic help from the government.
No.
No.
Serbia (Belgrade)
Yes, they can be budget students but if they are excellent students and if they are from sensitive social groups they are getting some privileges regarding this.
No, I haven’t noticed it.
Yes, there is a library. Also, they can copy the books or borrow some equipment.
I don’t think so.
Yes, I have heard of cases where students paid to pass an exam.
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The responses from the questions provided in the discussion are, as follows: 1. What is the law situation in your country about students and working at the same time? • “In Lithuania, there are no benefits. It’s difficult to work while studying.” • “In Serbia, there is no particular law, but it’s hard to manage both things if you are at public faculty.” • “In Spain, the only thing related to law is that you can ask for a part-time scholarship, instead of 60 credits you can ask for more credits for free.” • “In Portugal it’s impossible to be a regular student and work at the same time, you can apply for special working status, but it’s not that easy and not that many people can do it.” • “In Austria classes are not mandatory; if you have time you can work and study at the same time.” • “In Sweden working is not something everyone does, but it’s common to work. In general, you don’t get paid by your parents. The government gives you enough money to live normally, but for anything extra, you have to work. If you have a student job and you earn too much (7000 euros/ semester) you get less money from the government.” • “In the Czech Republic public education is free, and it’s common to work during studies. Benefits in law: insurance (people need to pay insurance, students get insurance paid by the government). Another thing are taxes; if you’re a student you have lower taxes, so your student job get to be paid more than people in the same position.“ • “In Hungary taxes are lower for students, and they have a minimum wage for a job (approx.1.5 - 2 euros /hour). Approximatelly 60% of students are working but it’s because Budapest is expensive so it’s easier for them to live. Usually, you need to work 20h/week. Some people study longer because they work.” • “In Denmark, your studies are your full-time job, so you get paid for studies. You can have a part-time job and get paid for that, but if you earn too much from the job, you have to return some of the money for taxes to the government.” • “In Russia, you can apply for regular or evening masters program and if you get it you can work in parallel.” • “In Greece I think there’s no law, the university has nothing to do with your studies. Until you get a degree you’re protected by your parents and don’t pay taxes.” • “There’s no law in Sweden, but it’s not very common for students to work.” • “In Ukraine students can work while studying, universities don’t support students who work, but professors are flexible.” • “In Serbia, the budget scholarship is cancelled if you start working, but there is a loophole if it’s a paid internship you can work.”
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• “In Croatia, it is allowed to work with a student contract, but if the fee is over 2000 euros/ year, then the taxes have to be paid by the parents.” • “In Portugal you can work, you can do the exams later.” • “In Spain, you can work but you are on your own. Classes are mandatory but you can ask the professors to skip some.” 2. Does your university have any regulations regarding working and studying? “At Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University there are no extra regulations.” “At the University of Belgrade, they don’t really care if you are working, but they want you to focus on school.” “At the Polytechnic University of Valencia you can say that you are working, so you have the possibility to only take exams and don’t go to lectures. You just need to justify it, which is easy to do.” “At the Graz University of Technology, you can be a regular student, no need to go to classes and you have a choice of 5 possible dates when you want to take the exam.” “At Riga Technical University there are no regulations. If you try to talk to professors, most of them tell you that it doesn’t concern them, as students are there to study.” “At the Technical University of Madrid, the jobs dealt between companies and university have regulations, but just in case of internships. In case of normal job which is not connected to the university, we have no laws to protect our studies.” “At the National Technical University of Ukraine, there are regular studies but also classes where you don’t have to go, so they are no regulations regarding working and studying.” “At the University of Zagreb, they encourage working but you have to go to classes.” “At the University of Lisbon, it’s regulated by law.” “At the Technical University of Madrid, if during the year you decide to go only to exams, you can work.” “At the National Technical University of Athens, there are no regulations. Courses are not mandatory, only some labs are mandatory. You can take exams as much as you want.” “At Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University there are no scholarships, you have to be in every class even if you’re working, professors don’t care.“ At the Technical University of Denmark, there’s no regulations supporting students for working, but you have 3 tries to pass a course and all class attendance except some labs are not mandatory. “At Budapest University of Technology and Economics there’s a form (you also speak with professors) you fill in and you don’t have to attend classes except for maybe some labs. You can give your assignments bit later, but in each class, we have 3-4 opportunities to pass an exam, after that there’s a small fee, but you can also take it next year for some fee if you don’t pass. It’s pretty flexible.“
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3. Are professors allowing students to skip classes due to working? “At Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University they don’t allow it; they really don’t like when you don’t go to classes; you should not miss classes and they are all mandatory.” “At the University of Belgrade, most of the classes are mandatory, but not all. However, professors probably won’t allow you to miss classes or move exams just because of work. “ “At the Polytechnic University of Valencia, if you justify it, they will let you.” “At the University of Porto we can skip classes when we are in the working status situation.” “At Graz University of Technology classes are not mandatory, but you can not skip laboratory.” “At the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, it’s mandatory for you to attend classes, but you can miss 30% of classes. Lab work is obligatory and professors don’t care about your job.” “At Czech Technical University in Prague, it depends on the professor, it’s a very individual thing. Officially we have a regulation that says approximately 50% of classes are mandatory. It’s not the same in every class, it’s always the agreement of the student and professor.“ “At Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, professors check attendance in the beginning and at the end of the class, so the professors are not allowing us to go to work.” “In Sweden it’s completely opposite, they’re very open-minded when you want to skip class, you can.” “Only labs are mandatory in Denmark, whether professors want to give you pass depends on professors personally. You have to go to a lab, but some may help rearrange schedule so that you can attend it.” “In Greece it’s the same as in Denmark, for lectures nobody cares, they’re not mandatory, but labs are, but in say 80% of labs you can arrange with a teacher and come another day, without some official proof.” “Yes, at the National Technical University of Ukraine some professors don’t care, but some are allowing you if you work in the field.“ “At the University of Novi Sad you have to go to classes, they can allow only if it’s some competition.“ “At the University of Zagreb, they would say no, but if you work in the field you can miss classes.” “At the Technical University of Madrid depends on the professor, some are comprehensive and understand students.”
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6. Literature 1. Vasiliki Kalfa, Michiel Avau, Joao Camacho and Tamara Kuretoska, Education: Be the part of the next generation (Board of European Students of Technology, 2017) 2. Adria Balcazar Castell, Christina Gouvatsou, Ivona Stojanovska and Metin Oktay Balaban, Skills and challenges of next generations on education and teaching methods (Board of European Students of Technology, 2017) 3. Natalia Mazur, Joao Pacheco, Joannis Mentekidis and Cagri Basaran, Bringing Education and Entrepreneurship under students’ scope (Board of European Students of Technology, 2013) 4. Fielding, Michael, “Beyond student voice: Patterns of partnership and the demands of deep democracy”, Revista de Educación, 359 (September 2012) 5. Crouch, Fagen, Callan and Mazur; “Classroom demonstrations: Learning tools or entertainment?”. American Association of Physics Teachers, (Feb 20, 2004) 6. Miller, Lasry, Chu and Mazur; “Role of physics lecture demonstrations in conceptual learning”. Phys. Rev. St. Phys. Educ. Res. 9, (Sep 17, 2013)
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