The European project EngineeriNg educaTors pEdagogical tRaining (ENTER) was launched in November 2018 and the main goal is the creation of a new multicultural and international approach to professional and pedagogical education for engineering teachers.
The ENTER network approach, focused on the needs of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and teachers, aims to increase considerably the number of engineering teachers enrolled in pedagogical and professional improvement programs.
The project, with a funding value of € 868,768, is led by ISEP, the engineering school of the Polytechnic of Porto, and includes several partners, between universities and professional engineering orders from Russia and Kazakhstan, such as Kazakhstan Association of Engineering Education, National Research Institute of Tomsk Polytechnic University, Association for Engineering Education of Russia, as well as other European universities, such as Tallinn University of Technology of Estonia and Dubnica Institute of Technology in Dubnica nad Váhom, Slovakia.
For José Carlos Quadrado, Pro-President for Internationalization, "this project will have a profound impact on the quality of engineering education, first in the ENTER members, but later expanding globally." The educational programs generated by the project (called iPET - Pedagogical Engineering Trainning) will be internationally accredited and respect the premises of the context of the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning.
The purpose is to increase the pedagogical capacity of the teachers of the Engineering, reinforcing the innovative nature of the approach in order to better respond to the demands of modern society. Examples are skills such as intercultural communication, ethics, psychological sustainability under the stress factors of the modern environment marketing and management skills, as well as the improvement of tools such as TRIZ Methodology, Mind Mapping, and b-learning methodologies. To better respond to this framework - elucidates the Pro-President - "the iPET program determines three levels of educational programs with emphasis on content, methodology, and forms of education, respectively Certificate of Qualification Development; Diploma of Professor of Higher Education, and Educator of Engineering ". The ultimate goal of this line of development - concludes José Carlos Quadrado "is to be able to build a similar approach to the MBA for engineering teachers."
