Contribution to the development of technology-enhanced education in manufacturing and energy generation

In order to revert a global ecological collapse that would jeopardize Earth’s capacity to sustain life, international organizations, such as the United Nations, have stressed the need to improve manufacturing methods and energy generation technologies. However, challenges towards the implementation of these methods and technologies vary according to the perspective. Rich countries need to drastically reduce their carbon emissions without abandoning their economic growth and / or decreasing the living standards of their populations. On the other hand, developing economies need to subject their rapid socio-economic development to environmental constraints while facing a severe scarcity of human resources technically competent to introduce methods and technologies necessary to generate local wealth, while reducing the environmental impact generated by productive and energy generation processes. This scarcity is especially dire in rural and informal urban settlement, where the need of local value creation is needed the most. Given the limited success of current instructional approaches in overcoming specialists’ deficits in these societies, new paradigms of education are necessary to support global sustainable development. These paradigms should be based in the integration of economic globalization aspects, rapid development of educational technologies, and didactic methods as a means to generate societal well-being with minimal environmental impacts. This dissertation proposes an Instructional Design Model for Engineering Education (IDMEE) aimed at improving engineering education’s quality in developing countries. The proposed model bases its approach in the alignment of so-called educational dimensions to support instruction planners during the planning and delivery of formal and non-formal instruction with a strong technical component. In the proposed model, a strong emphasis has been given to the design of laboratories, appropriate to match specific engineering educational needs of heterogeneous audiences in developing countries. The model is validated through the design and development of mobile high-end portable laboratories to support developing countries’ education in the fields of sustainable manufacturing and energy generation. The design of these laboratories, deemed its physical portability feature as fundamental as a means to overcome technical and pedagogical shortcomings of distant-education alternatives. Demonstrators, realized and documented within the framework of this dissertation include a mobile E-Bike photovoltaic charging station, a portable wind tunnel, and a mobile learning factory for manufacturing. Each demonstrator is designed to address a variety of audiences according to its academic level and training purpose. Through appealing designs and features, as well as intuitive interfaces reducing external supervision, audiences comprising primary and secondary education students for instance, can be motivated to pursue higher education in the fields of engineering. On the other hand, undergraduate and graduate engineers can gain deep technical knowledge in renewable energies and manufacturing, and uneducated audiences can obtain basic knowledge enabling them to generate local value creation networks.

Author dc:creator

• Palacios Neffke, Jens C.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Seliger, Günther

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Identifier URI

http://dx.doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-6049

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:depositonce.tu-berlin.de:11303/6550