Work-in-progress: European platform for innovation and collaboration between engineer students (EPICES)

EPICES is an Erasmus plus strategic partnership project (September 2014-August 2016) co-funded by the EU. There are seven academic partners and one association engaged in this project. The purpose of EPICES is to develop a European collaboration on at-a-distance project-based learning framework and method, based on already existing and still developing technical platforms, i.e. collaborative and engineering tools. A special focus will be made on teachers´ role and students´ coaching, from the analysis of what a coach should be in project based learning to training packages for teachers and development of assessment methods. This focus is a key issue to be discussed in order to develop project based learning for engineer students, especially in international and/or industrial context, which requires strong and effective collaboration of all actors to succeed and innovate within the project based learning framework. In EPICES, sub-projects are developed, which place students in the middle of real industrial European at a distance projects, i.e. in the heart of the future job of every current engineer student. These sub-projects are study cases, study materials, and allow many feedbacks and intellectual outputs on coaching, teachers´ role and assessment issues. Since its beginning, EPICES has gained in maturity and in this work-in-progress the objective is to present the first achievements of three intellectual outputs: establishing a model of facilitator roles and skills in project-based learning in European engineering education; studying teacher facilitation in preparation for training of teacher, creating assessment methodology for project-based learning in engineering studies and development of tools for assessment of skills.