Interview with Conf. univ. dr. ing. Cristian Paul CHIONCEL of the Engineering Faculty at UNIVERSITATEA “BABEŞ-BOLYAI”
The DigiDemo project aims at improving engineering education on smart products through demonstrators. What kind of demonstrators have you developed?
The demonstrators developed have been focused to improve the students’ competencies through interdisciplinarity knowledge and understanding between the areas of electronics, mechanics and IoT. To place the growth of technical education on solid foundations, the until now, developed demonstrators in the Faculty of Engineering of the Babes-Bolyai University, CNC machine, Robot and Structural Health Monitoring, seeks to contribute to an easier and more practical understanding of the phenomena used and controlled, in the engineering applications.
Centrul Universitar UBB Reşiţa is the responsible partner for evaluation. Why is evaluation important?
Evaluation is important in every approach, even more so in education. Students’ knowledge is evaluated, but, also, the tools that support the learning process are also subject of evaluation. The role of the developed demonstrators is to improve the understanding in the classes where they are implemented, but, also, awareness related to present and future challenges, as sustainability. It is important, for each partner institution, to know where they are with the proposed targets! Each evaluation process is also tied to a continuous process of improvement, such the identified minuses can be remedied.
How do you practically do evaluation?
The evaluation process is based on formal and informal feedback from students who use demonstrators in activities with application character. The formal evaluation is based on an online survey completed anonymously by the students. The questionnaire was developed based on the feedback from all partners obtained in the online and on-site project meetings. Important, as well, is the informal feedback obtained on the spot from the students while they use the demonstrator.
Do you already have feed-back from students? How do they evaluate the use of demonstrators in their study programme?
Based on the feedback from the students, the use of the demonstrators developed and implemented in the project is positive! The main tracked directions sought to be achieved are widely perceived to have been attained.