A science mapping study on learning factories research

Learning factories are a rising and promising environment for engineering education, training, and research. Practical interest in learning factories has peaked in recent years, attracting the worldwide attention of scholars and practitioners. This study conducts a scientometric review of the global research published since 1995 on learning factories, through co-citation, keyword and clustering analysis. A total of 367 journal papers and conference proceedings from the Scopus database were analyzed, to distinguish key publications and main research trends. By performing a mapping exercise, a detailed analysis of the learning factories’ literature enables academic support for future research. The provided results are used to identify the main areas of contribution of learning factories research and understand the potential gaps in current research

Everything is INTERRELATED:Teaching Software Engineering for Sustainability

Sustainability has become an important concern across many disciplines,and software systems play an increasingly central role in addressing it. However, teaching students from software engineering and related disciplines to effectively act in this space requires interdisciplinary courses that combines the concep to of sustainability with software engineering practice and principles. Yet, presently little guidance exist on which subjects and materials to cover in such courses and how, combined with a lack of reusable learning objects. This paper describes a summer school course on Software Engineering for Sustainability (SE4S). We provide a blueprint for this course, in the hope that it can help the community develop a shared approach and methods to teaching SE4S. Practical lessons learned from delivery of this course are also reported here, and could help iterate over the course materials, structure, and guidance for future improvements. The course blueprint, availability of used materials and report of the study results make this course viable for replication and further improvement

Diseño, construcción y aplicación de una Fábrica de Aprendizaje orientada a la formación experiencial

La educación en ingeniería se ha definido como uno de los caminos para afrontar los retos en el sector manufacturero, sin embargo, la formación de los profesionales no ha evolucionado a la misma velocidad de los avances tecnológicos y las practicas actuales se han visto limitadas para entregar profesionales con competencias ingenieriles y un fuerte respaldo multidisciplinar -- El balance teórico-práctico de los currículos y el acceso a auténticas practicas experienciales de ingeniería han sido dos aspectos claves en el mejoramiento de este proceso de formación -- En esta dirección un tipo de iniciativas nombradas Fábricas de Aprendizaje (FA) han tenido aceptación; estas son definidas como la réplica de una sección de la cadena de valor industrial donde el aprendizaje tiene lugar -- Por medio de este trabajo de tesis de maestría fue construida la primera FA en Colombia, que tenía como objetivo principal el fortalecimiento de la relación teórico-práctica en el área de manufactura de la Universidad Eafit -- Para la construcción de ésta, se realizó una revisión de la literatura y se planteó un enfoque para estructurar una FA, denominado los tres pilares (didáctico, integración e ingeniería) -- Los anteriores agruparon el conjunto de características que esta iniciativa debía de incluir para ser catalogada como una FA -- La integración de la teoría de aprendizaje experiencial en el pilar didáctico y en específico, el sistema para implementar módulos temáticos experienciales (4MAT), fueron fundamentales, tanto para lograr el objetivo principal de la investigación como para contribuir en la estructuración de prácticas en este tipo de escenarios -- Por último, para validar el enfoque propuesto, la integración del sistema experiencial 4MAT, la exploración de los resultaros de aprendizaje y estado de motivación de los participantes en la actividad, se desarrolló un caso de estudio -- Este trabajo de tesis argumenta que el proceso de estructuración de la FA Universidad EAFIT permitió alinear las necesidades puntuales del área de manufactura con las características que debían de ser embebidas en una FA -- El enfoque de los tres pilares no solo facilito el diseño sistemático de la infraestructura de la FA, sino que vínculo un en su pilar didáctico el sistema 4MAT, el cual permite enmarcar el desarrollo de los módulos temáticos en dirección del aprendizaje experiencial -- La creación de esta sinergia entre la FA y el sistema experiencial 4MAT, vinculó al currículo de manufactura del programa de ingeniería de producción las primeras practicas experienciales orientadas al fortalecimiento de la relación teórico- práctic

An Action Research Inquiry into Professional Training and Development for Addressing Complex Urban Problems

The world is becoming increasingly urbanized. Municipal, metropolitan, regional and national governments, companies, international organizations, financiers, technology developers and civil society across the globe are faced with increasingly complex problems to transform the potential challenge of rapid urbanization into an opportunity to foster development and prosperity in societies. Cities are under immense pressure to address environmental sustainability issues. In addition, utilizing the potential of technologies and innovations, often under the label of Smart City initiatives, to enhance the performance in terms of efficiency, resilience and sustainability has become an important priority on many cities' agendas. In this complex urban context, infrastructures, which are best conceptualized as complex socio-technical systems, play a crucial role in attaining the desired performance for cities. Governance of urban infrastructures plays a pivotal role in enabling cities to deliver quality services to citizens. Addressing complex problems associated with governance of large urban infrastructures calls for a genuine holistic-multidisciplinary approach. However, literature shows that urban practitioners (both in the public and private sector) seldom approach complex urban problems from such a holistic and multidisciplinary perspective, and technical and discipline-specific approaches continue to prevail. The current literature also highlights the important role that professional training can play in helping urban practitioners to adopt such a perspective. Yet, only a limited number of studies have attempted to shed light on the challenges associated with training urban practitioners to adopt a holistic perspective; even fewer studies go on to propose effective strategies for dealing with those challenges in practice. This thesis precisely sheds light on this understudied domain of research. Action Research is used as the research methodology in this thesis. A full-scale Executive Master program on innovative governance of large urban systems (IGLUS) was developed and served as the empirical context of the research. The thesis reports the processes undertaken for the design, implementation, and continuous evaluation of the IGLUS Executive Master. Building upon this solid empirical basis, it also provides a systematic and structured illustration of some of the most important challenges associated with training urban practitioners to adopt a more holistic-multidisciplinary perspective to address complex urban problems. Strategies for effectively dealing with these challenges, and ultimately delivering a transformative learning experience, are also proposed. The key findings of this thesis are that critical reflection is instrumental to developing meaningful learning experiences for adult learners. Developing and using conceptual frameworks can serve as an invaluable pedagogical exercise; supporting the meaning-making processes for both the educators and learners. Helping adults to effectively engage in critical reflection in and on their actions is absolutely essential, but is an inherently complex and delicate task. Thus, delivering a learning experience on the basis of promoting critical reflection requires a genuinely innovative, reflective and comprehensive approach towards the design and delivery of the training programs; in these settings knowledgeable, dedicated and creative program managers and educators play a pivotal role