New Perspectives in Science Education

The growing needs for individual mobility creates new challenges for future powertrain engineers. Tomorrow’s powertrain engineers, besides being talented, they need to know how to apply these skills according to a system approach while working in international teams with multicultural environment.To prepare these future “global” powertrain engineers, it is necessary to develop new educational  approaches based on the transfer of knowledge. As an applied Engineering School, our learning goals include not only the acquisition of technical skills, but most importantly, the ability to put this knowledge into practice. Therefore, the pedagogical approach and the interactive tools used is our classrooms are chosen to implement a  “Learning by doing” approach. In this paper, we will present different approaches that have been developed at IFP School and that are currently successfully applied in the Powertrain Department. In particular, we will explain how we introduced pedagogical approaches focused on interactive learning activities in order to increase the interest and the motivation of the students, and consequently to increase their learning capability. The integration of this activities requires a different organization of the lectures and requires a specific development: the use of e-learning with flipped classes must be integrated so that the teachers have free time in the classroom to explore new activities.Two examples are in particular described:First, the use of a serious game as a learning tool. This innovative idea uses real engine models integrated in a fun game-style environment. The idea is that the students need to apply the acquired knowledge to solve industrial problems (like the fuel consumption or pollutant emission’s reduction). Second, the use of a virtual reality environment to explore engine test benches. In this case, with special glasses and a smartphone, the students are able to explore a complex environment in the classroom. Finally, we will describe the activities oriented to the understanding of the impact of the cultural background to communicate and work efficiently. In our experience, all these new educational approaches are really necessary and very efficient to improve motivation and to prepare international students to become a global powertrain engineer.

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