PEESA I
This programme on Energy Efficiency in Southern Africa is partnering with Namibia and South Africa. The PEESA project intends to increase the number of highly qualified professionals in regenerative energy and to improve the quality of the higher education locally under the Edulink Call.
The overall objective is to ensure that the African partner universities advance the curricula and reach the global standards for engineering education. A Master shall be designed and implemented at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Polytechnic of Namibia, Vaal University of Technology and Tshwane University of Technology according to EU quality requirements. In addition a “train the trainer” online program for preparation of future teachers will be designed and implemented with a quality assurance system aligned to EU quality standards. Lead partner is the Wismar University of Applied Sciences. The Centre for Business and Technology in Africa is responsible for project controlling, quality assurance and the design of specialized courses.
Project folder on PEESA: Edulink-320-301
PEESA II
The PEESA II-Project aims to increase the number of high qualified experts in the renewable energy sector and the quality of the education in universities in southern Africa. Like this the autarchy of the African countries in the south of the Sahara will be encouraged.
The planned concept will be extended by the input of several partners and partner countries.
Especially aspects concerning the blended learning and digitalism of academic teaching are gathering more attention then before. To handle the huge amounts of students the traditional ways of sharing the relevant content will be extended. Knowledge about the digitalism of academic teaching will increase and help other projects in Africa and Germany. The Flensburg university and the Wismar university both are interested. Furthermore is the exchange of didactics by the universities a key aspect. With the – about to develop – courses in English, based on the experiences of the network of universities for applied science in Germany, an intercultural and multidisciplinary exchange between Germany and Africa is established. The lecturers are supposed to realize their strength and weaknesses in teaching and improve their overall skills in the course of time.
PEESA III
Personalised Engineering Education in Southern Africa: An Erasmus+ project for “Capacity Building in Higher Education – Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices”
European Partners
- Wismar University of Applied Sciences. Technology, Business and Design (Applicant), Germany
- Flensburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany
- University of Szczecin, Poland
- Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania
- ASIIN
South African Partners
- Cape Peninsula University of Technology
- Tshwane University of Technology
- Vaal University of Technology
- Durbin University of Technology
The consortium is shaped on the basis of five principles such as complementarity, excellence, commitment, balance and sustainability. All the participants have wide experience in international cooperation including the previous European Programmes.
The integration of different complementary backgrounds and expertise of each partner will contribute to working effectively together as the partners show complementary and synergic competences that will be integrated in the different WPs to fulfil the project objectives
The impact strategy of PEESA III requires a European level approach. PEESA III aims to contribute to the vision of the Digital Agenda 2020, by fostering a deeper usage of ICT for smart, sustainable and inclusive engineering education and traning. The project requires the integration of several areas of expertise, approaches, and application domains ranging from motivation theory, flexible learning paths such as distance and blended learning, quality management, university-business co-operation, behavioral economics, user modeling, education digitalisation and digitisation, social media management, game design and gamification, data integration.
Traditionally, capacity building includes the building of human, institutional, and infrastructure capacity shows that
- only few projects were devoted to engineering education in the field of higher education,
- from these few projects targeted at engineering education in the field of higher education, the only focus was put on the building of institutional and infrastructure capacity
- no a project on engineering education aimed at Southern Africa.
Thus, the building of human capacity in general and educator capacity in particular in engineering education in Southern Africa has not received any attention. In order to fill in this lacuna, PEESA III will contribute to the enhancement of the capacity of educators in engineering education, capitalizing on mature methodologies and technologies combined under novel social innovation schemes, namely socio-digital approach. PEESA III demonstrates the overall concept for educators’ capacity development via training/coaching/mentoring/etc, indicating how the steps of the process are related following a logical chain: 1) analysis of student needs (educator and business awareness and feedback, European standards, etc), 2) data analysis, 3) educators’ hybrid (traditional, on-line, etc) engagement (regional government, company visit, digitalisation, European standards in engineering education, flexible learning paths, etc), 4) student friendly degree programme modelling, 5) intelligent quality management. PEESA III solution for educator training proceeds from Consideration of individual, social and economic achievement in Phase 1 through Hybrid (traditional and on-line) adaptive educator training in Phase 2, Hybrid (individual and social) goal setting in Phase 3, Degree programme adjustment in Phase 4 to Context aware recommendations for sustainable maintenance of degree programs in Phase 5.
PEESA III will implement and validate an integrated socio-ditigal approach to the capacity building of educators in engineering education for personalisation of engineering education in Southern Africa, by developing innovative student-friendly degree programmes for making smart, sustainable and inclusive engineering education available for the different users and stakeholders (prospective students, students, employees, business, ICT providers) empowering them to collaborate to enrich the capacity and manage their needs in engineering education in efficient and sustained ways.
Prof. Dr. Kay Pfaffenberger
kay.pfaffenberger@hs-flensburg.de
+49 461 805 1748