Conference Agenda

This paper explores the integration of digital competence in teaching and learning research skills within the University 4.0 paradigm, emphasizing its applicability in educational contexts outside technical disciplines. University 4.0, aligned with Education 4.0, frames research as a central element, fostering creativity, innovation, and continuous learning. The study assesses self-perceptions of digital com-petencies among graduate and postgraduate Educational Sciences students in Ar-gentina, focusing on their ability to utilize digital tools essential for research in humanistic fields. Employing a mixed-method approach, data was collected through an online survey, examining self-perceived digital competence and the extent to which it aligns with the requirements of modern research practices. Re-sults reveal gaps in digital proficiency, even in basic computing commands, more notoriously at graduate than postgraduate levels. These findings underline chal-lenges in adapting digital tools in educational careers distant from engineering, stressing the need for targeted interventions to achieve the Student 4.0 model. The study contributes to understanding digital literacies' role in fostering research skills, emphasizing the necessity for university programs to offer transformative opportunities that address digital gaps and align with evolving educational para-digms. It highlights critical implications for curriculum design in fostering digital competence as a cornerstone for future educational leadership and innovation.

Portfolios have long been used to collate professional achievements and serve a purpose in presenting the capabilities of an individual, group or company. In re-cent times, the traditional folder or folio has been replaced to a large extent by an electronic version, or the e-portfolio. In an educational context, the goal of portfo-lios remains the same – to showcase the capabilities and achievements of a stu-dent as they reach the learning outcomes of their course of study, or the graduate capabilities of the profession they seek to enter. As with many examples, conver-sion to electronic format has potential advantages and disadvantages, and creates new opportunities. It is possible that there are missed opportunities in the area of student portfolios, often due to the institutional choice of structure or software platform.

This paper unpacks the key purpose, likely use cases and hence requirements of an undergraduate engineering student portfolio. A portfolio will be used to demonstrate progress towards and achievement of graduate capabilities. A sys-tems engineering approach is applied to the requirements analysis of the e-portfolio in the given context. A quality standard will be developed to assist in the selection of structure and software platforms.

The first milestone is the articulation of the purpose of the portfolio. This will be developed based on literature as well as the requirements of the stakeholders. A requirements analysis follows, taking in the perspective of stakeholders includ-ing students, staff, the institution, future employers and accrediting bodies. The V-Model Systems Engineering design approach is then used to explore the area of e-portfolios, discovering and defining the stakeholder requirements.

This paper considers the design and development of a project-based learning unit within an undergraduate engineering degree. The context of the project is within an engineering curriculum with a strong reliance on project-based learning to support the development and assessment of technical and professional engineering skills which are captured in graduate outcomes.

The program in this context is designed so that the student learning outcomes are intentionally scaffolded through the program, and so the requirements and scope of the particular units are well defined.

The paper documents the use of the V-Model systems engineering approach to the design, development and evaluation of a student project in the first instance, and the development of the assessment tasks in a project-based learning unit.

This paper focuses on encouraging and inspiring young women to study engineering by investigating how female students are encouraged and motivated to study in the STEM field. To this end, a theory-based study orientation programme for female secondary school students was designed, implemented and evaluated. The design-based research project aims to provide evidence-based and transferable findings on the successful STEM study choice orientation of women in the context of digital transformation. In addition, the development of self-efficacy, initiative and creative potential of young women will be analysed. The structure and implementation of the study orientation programme will be explained in detail. In particular, the production management workshop, in which female secondary school students were introduced to production processes through game-based learning, will be presented and discussed. It is analysed which workshops did motivate the participants most and in which they point out to have learned most. Self-assessments of the students before and after the workshops are presented. In addition, some outstanding examples of concurrent observation are presented in order to discuss the insights gained and improvements for future interventions.

Previous studies of handgrip strength show that besides maximum force (HGSmax), other relevant descriptors obtained from the handgrip strength time profile (HGS(t)) are associated with muscle function and physical functional performance. Recently, a study has shown that the HGS(t) can be described by linear models of first or second order, with or without time delay.

A Gripwise dynamometer was used to obtain and record in the cloud a larger data set, allowing the identification of models based on adequate continuous-time transfer functions. This work supports the exploration of universal descriptors, other than maximum HGS (HGSmax), that can be related to muscle function and physical functional performance evaluated by universally used tests. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to contribute new insights to characterize the Handgrip strength time profile by applying model identification methods to a large and diverse data set.

The proposed approach can also be useful to motivate students, for example in the area of Biomedical Engineering, to apply model identification methods in real applications and learn about their relevance for describing physiological processes through physics-informed machine learning models and generating features for different purposes.

The authors consider the results promising for future exploitation of the approach to investigate and extract the characteristics of the time-dependent HGS (HGS(t)).

A laboratory course related to the titration of equilibrium states of ternary mixtures for biochemical and chemical engineers is updated concerning its topicality and pedagogical benefit. The existing scripts are updated with Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) directly communicated prior to the laboratory activities to the students. Furthermore, pre- and post-laboratory course tests assess the increase in student’s understanding regarding the topic in a structured manner. The previous laboratory involved much outdated manual work, as the main learning activity of the old laboratory was the titration of chemicals, which is a skill already learned in previous laboratories.

Thus, new learning outcomes are introduced based on the newly constructed and erected automated titration apparatus.Using this apparatus, students will be able to apply fundamental concepts of automation and program a controller for titration interactively.