ConnectING 19 juni 2022

FACULTY WORLDWIDE
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
IN AN INTERNET-OF-THINGS
WORLD
The future will be digital and sustainable. And tomorrow’s sustainable society will be shaped
with the help of Internet -of- Things. This message has been picked up on Ghent Technology
Campus: from 14 to 18 March, an intensive programme has been organized on this theme.
About 50 engineering students from 7 different countries have been working on new insights
and technologies that will turn our energy supply, energy distribution and energy use more
sustainable for the next generations.
Prof. Liesbet Van der Perre and Simon Ravyts, the organisers
of this course (with EU funding as a Blended Intensive
Programme) are looking back on a successful edition.
Their research groups Dramco and Electra saw an opportunity
to engage in this adventure together.
“The multi-disciplinarity of the course turned out to be a major
added value”, explains Prof. Van der Perre.” It has brought our
two research teams on renewable energy and IoT closer together,
which we believe will result in increased future collaboration.”
The course’s focus is on the concept of ‘SUSTOPIA’: a society
where living, working, transport and leisure are organized in the
most sustainable way. Energy generation, storage, distribution,
and usage all get ample attention, together with the societal impact
for transport, urban planning, work organization and other domains.
Project based
International experts from the universities of Lund, La Rochelle,
Porto, and Anhalt as well as industry experts contributed to
the intensive course. Students were divided into teams after
registration and were given the assignment of developing
concrete cases in international teams under the supervision of
academic coaches. “The project-based learning approach in
teams created a special learning experience for the participating
students”, says Simon. The classical teaching system is replaced
with a more active format where student learn to work with real
life challenges and with the unpredictability of problems and the
variables and incomplete information which are inherent to
complex issues such as energy sustainability.”
This one-week international course is not only innovative by
its integrated and multidisciplinary approach ‘under way to a
SUSTOPIA society’, but also the format is using a combination
of transnational online collaboration and physical mobility.
This blended type of education is a new format of international
education, combining the best elements of physical mobility
(the international and intercultural immersion) and the online
component (digital learning and education).
Network
The SUSTOPIA course is part of a larger scheme of seven
intensive courses that have been set up by the partner universities
of the EUCLIDES network, the EUCLIDES INTERNATIONAL
WEEKS. The Faculty of Engineering Technology, as a founding
member of EUCLIDES network, is participating actively in six of
the seven projects.
Students and staff participating in these courses have been
working online in teams for a month, co-creating on specific
projects. The intensive week in Ghent is the physical moment
where teams of students and staff meet.
The Faculty of Engineering Technology has made a strategic
choice involving this blended mobility. “This format can function
as complementary to the traditional student exchanges”,
says Prof. Van der Perre. “This type of collaboration allows
students and staff who – for whichever reason – are not able to
participate in longer mobility periods, to join in meaningful
international activities.”
Both Prof. Van der Perre and Simon Ravyts are eager to go and
teach in other EUCLIDES network intensive programmes in
future editions.
Hilde Lauwereys
www.kuleuven.be/campussen/technologiecampus-gent
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