The idea for this project came from the group of people whose expertise include virtual instrumentation design, real-time control systems and signal processing. These three areas overlap extensively, and by combining them it is possible to build multidisciplinary solutions for vast range of problems including process industry, biomedicine, physics, sports, tracking systems etc. The idea was born in last couple of years while team members from different participating institutions were meeting during student competition which was held in different cities. Through many discussions in the meetings among university staff and also between them and the industry professionals, a mutual conclusion was reached that it is necessary to change the topics that are covered in teaching in particular courses connected to the areas of interest. Also it was concluded that it is important to include innovative approaches in teaching to have more interaction with students and to get them more involved in teaching. The objectives of this project include introducing new methodology to teaching students, namely by giving them more practical tasks, having more interaction with them by providing them to work together in the small groups, by letting them using the available materials at all the, by solving problems together with them or proposing the patterns on how to solve specific problems. Furthermore, one of the objectives is to change few courses in all participating institutions, as well as to completely introduce some particular courses in order to uniform the knowledges acquired in all institutions in areas where that is necessary and together with this in that way to satisfy the needs of the industry in need. To improve on these courses material will be developed thorough this project, namely practicums and books for particular courses. One more objective that cover the area of innovative approaches is a case of establishing e-learning platform which would ease student interaction and learning. Video materials of lectures provided by all participants which will be available via e-learning platform is considered as another objective. Five participating institutions, namely Universities from Novi Sad, Belgrade, Warsaw, Zagreb and Skopje are all included in the project based on their earlier collaboration and expertise in the fields of interest. Key persons from those institutions cover different research fields (UNS for automatic control systems, UB for biomedical engineering, machine vision and robotics, UKiM for power engineering, TVZ for optical measurements, WUT for electronics and physics). Activities that are going to be performed in the project will be technical and teaching/researching/scientific in sense of rebuilding courses, establishing new courses, developing digital materials for them, establishing e-learning platform etc. Also managerial activities are going to be performed like project planning, project control, project execution, project evaluation. Dissemination activities will be included into the project, such as multiplier events, seminars, websites, project facebook profile, project instagram profile and external events such as conferences in participating institutions, conferences in associated partners comapnies. For these activities leaflets, newsletters and fliers will be provided. Two Learning/Teaching/Training Activities will also be performed, namely 2 student competitions are supposed to be organized during the project duration. Project management methodology that is going to be used here is scrum methodology which is one of the most frequently used and most successful in IT project management. Results of the project will include a number new courses, some changed syllabuses in few courses, some new materials in digital form available for all stakeholders but mainly intended to students, video materials of lectures from all participating institutions, one new e-learning platform which is going to include all before mentioned particularities. Project is expected to have vast impact on all stakeholders, but mainly on students and employers (SMEs and large enterprises) as they will be provided with more quality potential employees after they finish their studies. Project is expected to have both local and global (EU) impact. It is believed that long term benefits of the project are substantial as it will provide new perspective towards teaching, new concepts and new topics for students which are jointly developed by faculties and industry and in that way it will provide more realistic problems so the students will be available to deal with them already when studying, Joint collaboration between project participants and associated partners is expected to last long in the future so the changes towards market demands and students teaching is expected to be updated on regular basis.
Five participating institutions, namely Universities from Novi Sad, Belgrade, Warsaw, Zagreb and Skopje were all included in the project based on their earlier collaboration and expertise in the fields of interest. Key persons from those institutions cover different research fields (UNS for automatic control systems, UB for biomedical engineering, machine vision and robotics, UKiM for power engineering, TVZ for optical measurements, WUT for electronics and physics). These all areas of expertise contain the demand for either control algorithms (systems), or signal processing or even designing virtual instruments. Therefore the collaboration between these five institutions came as a natural one. The project participants were already familiar with each other due to earlier collaboration through student competition held in past years. During those competitions project participants already had discussed about the lacks if current programs in their faculties, not only related to content, but even to methodology. Out of those discussion an idea was born to create a project like this. The main focus of the project participants was on students and how to make the courses they attend more interesting and more state of the art. Therefore the courses were updated with new topics, interesting as well for business representative with gave a feedback to project team what they are expecting from young engineers. Together with this students were given more practical tasks (specific problems from areas that project participants are expert for), they were encouraged to work jointly as a part of a team instead doing all the work individually. 19 IOs were produced within the project, including one Moodle platform, one completely jointly written practicum (all 5 project participants were involved with almost similar amount of effort), 8 modified courses in such extent that they cover state of the art approach in learning and most modern topics in their content. Together with this one output contains video material related to courses uploaded in Youtube, there were three outputs providing more new practicums – in development of these practicums only some of the project partners were involved. Even two completely new books were written and three new courses have been established. 2 LTT events were organized with around 50 students from all project participants Universities and some from external ones took part in them. About 10 business companies were involved in these LTTs promoting good collaboration between University and business sector. They also took part in jury of LLT activities competitions. 6 Multiplier events were organized with around 130 domestic and around 20 foreign participant from around 30 different companies taking part in them. In here are only those who are counted by the project and further these MEs were also visited by other people from participant Universities to learn about new opportunities this project and its results bring to them. The participant were introduced to the project and their results or the project planning depending on the time when the ME was organized. In MEs participants provided the feedback to the organizer of what they expect to be a part of the courses developed within the project in order for those courses to follow the fast changing market. Of course project participants had to compromise with how much teaching content can be changed in order to satisfy business demands. Project will have both short term benefits and long term benefits Hopefully, ITASDI project brings new perspective towards teaching, new concepts and new topics for students which are jointly developed by the participating Universities and industry.