This past month,
I had the pleasure of attending the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) in
Buenos Aires. The conference is meant to bring together stakeholders from
around the world in an effort to address the major challenges that are faced in
engineering education through global strategies and partnerships.
As with many of
the conferences that are centred on engineering education, the thought is that
if you can get the right people together into a room to share their ideas and
experiences, the engineering education community can begin to work together to
solve both individual and shared problems.
I have been to
several conferences over the past few months and though it sometimes seems like
my contribution as a booth engineer is somewhat limited in the context of
global engineering education strategy, there are advantages.
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| Above: the poster announcing the Quanser Driving Simulator Demonstration at WEEF 2012. The Driving Simulator is a recent example of the controls education advances Quanser is developing to improve the educational experience engineering students have at university. |
While
traditional attendees have opportunities to meet new people and share mutual
interests, I would suggest that the majority of interactions are with
established long-standing colleges. I would conservatively venture that though
I was tied to a booth for the majority of the conference, over a three day
period I probably interacted with 90% of the attendees. Though I would like to
believe that this was largely due to my stunning good looks and charm, it was
honestly probably due to the exciting driving simulator demo that I was in
front of.
Despite the
relatively small size of the WEEF conference, I think we had more students and
professors drive the simulator on the first two days of the conference than the
previous two conferences combined. Though I don’t have the most comprehensive
Spanish vocabulary (freno, acelerador, rápido!, etc.), I believe that the sheer
number of people who stopped by our booth offered an invaluable opportunity for
Hans Fernandez and me to share information about the innovative engineering
education products and approaches that Quanser offers.
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| Over one hundred eager engineering students from South America and around the world took the Quanser Driving Simulator for a test drive and enjoyed an exciting, hands-on educational experience. |
The WEEF
conference in particular was a fantastic opportunity for us to put the driving simulator experience into the hands of over a hundred engineering students from
all over South America and the world. Their reaction to the platform was very
exciting, with several students returning day after day to try to improve their
times or share the system with their friends.
It’s always
reassuring when a professor really latches onto the driving simulator concept,
immediately grasping the benefits of the platform. More than anything, however,
it was the students’ interest in the guts of the system and the interaction
between the controllers, simulation, and hardware that proved to me that we are
on the right track.
As a curriculum
engineer, my day-to-day job is to try and improve the educational experience
that students have while at university. At the end of the day, all of the
strategies and partnerships that come from these conferences are in the hands
of the students. By interacting with students directly and meeting
organizations like Student Platform for Engineering Education Development
(SPEED), I firmly believe that we have a chance to fundamentally improve the
educational experience for engineering students from the bottom up.
- Peter Martin
- Peter Martin
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