Community Service Engineering

Postgraduate course for engineers Bridging the worlds of technology, the social profit and the profit sector

1. What is it about?

It started with the Cera Award

a) Cera Award links social profit organisations to students in technical higher education

b) Students work on a technical problem in a social profit organisation.

c) Students develop social, communication and creative skills.

What the Cera Award reveiled…

a) There is a lot of innovation potential in the social profit sector

b) Engineers can contribute more to the sector if they understand more clearly the needs and challenges of the people and organisations their engineering projects serve.

The new curriculumA profile of engineersthat have profound knowledge of engineering &groups and organisations in the broad welfare sector

Social profit – ‘vulnerable groups’• Elderly• Intellectually disabled• Physically disabled• Sensory disabled• Youth at risk• People in poverty• People with a different migration background• People with addiction problems • Detainees• Long-term sick people• …

Social profit – subsectors

Engineering & ‘welfare’ topicsDirectly for the benefit of; to enhance the quality of living for end users

Engineering & ‘welfare’ topicsTo strenghten social profit organisations as entities

The history of engineering -(Wikipedia)

ExamplesV-pad

V-Pad is a tool that supports people with intellectual disabilities to be safe on the road. It uses a cell phone that follows the user and informs a supervisor if the user deviates from the expected path.

ExamplesToys for children with disabilities

All children like to play and they learn a lot from it, but this boy had never played with a crane before.

ExamplesBike lock

With this lock, peoplewith a physical disability can leave their bikes in a safe manner.Requirements:•Easy to operate•No keys or difficult codes to remember•An easy key for supervisors

ExamplesHair sink

A device that supports hair washing of people who have difficulties moving their headRequirements:•Prevents becoming wet•Easy to operate and move•Esthetical•….

ExamplesBody Guard

A lot of critical professions in the social profit sector itself: nurses, caregivers, orthopedagogues,…-> Technology to alleviate the heavy work load

ExamplesOnline counseling

Online help is arising in various sectors:-Youth Care-Speech Therapy-…

2. The curriculum in practice

STRUCTURE

Blended course

• Virtual learning environment = central meeting point

• Learning activities are organised across physical (± 1/3) and virtual spaces (± 2/3).

Connectivist or network learning

Fig. Pedagogical Learning by Developing model © Laurea University of Applied Sciences

Lessons from OlinProject based education•Smart design of project work throughout the curriculum•From a structured set of constraint problems to open ended projects

Practical issues

• Joint certificate Thomas More/KU Leuven (30 ECTS)

• Open for all types of engineering profiles

• In English, CEFR B2 is advised

3. Added value for graduates

Added value for graduates

Graduated Community Service Engineers can play a role in:•the social profit sector itself•companies in assistive technology•standard companies (product and market development for the social profit sector)

Added value for graduates

Community Service Engineers are particularly widely employable in the labour market because they have been trained at the crossroads of additional disciplines and have interacted with a variety of audiences and organisations.

4. Potential for the future

Changing the perception of the engineering profession

Many Europeans consider technology as a social problem, responsible for growing social inequality (digital gap), environmental pollution and climate change, job losses via automation

Technology as a facilitator for inclusion, accessiblity, efficiency of social profit organisations, alleviator of heavy work load,…

Partners

And the partnership enlarges

A 3 year project to work towards an international consortium with support of the European commissionWith partners from: Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden,…

Questions?

Inge VervoortCommunity Service Engineeringinge.vervoort@thomasmore.beJan DekelverResearch Coordinator Inclusionjan.dekelver@thomasmore.be

Our questions to you

• Do you know engineers who might be interested in taking this course? Please inform them.

• Do you know examples of technology used in or useful for the social profit sector? We would like to get to know these for our curriculum.

Our questions to you

• Do you know social profit organisations with a challenge for engineers? Please have them formulate their project proposal?

• Do you know experts in course contents topics? We would be interested in exploring collaboration potential.

More information

• http://associatie.kuleuven.be/cse