Hello, today we will look at environmental issues in aircraft design. As you can see on the screen, there are basically two issues and will touch upon both of them. The two key environmental issues are air pollution and noise pollution. Air pollution essentially means the emissions and the key emissions are the carbon dioxide, the NOx or nitrates of oxygen, carbon monoxide and particulate matters. The problem is that these emissions contribute greatly to the global warming. As far as noise pollution is concerned, it leads to a negative impact on the health of the people who are subjected to the noise. Studies have also shown that excessive exposure to noise can lead to cardiovascular issues like hypertension and increased stress levels. There is also a negative psychological impact. Essentially, in the form of anions, anions to whom to the people who live in the areas near the airports or the airport neighbors. So, let us first look at air pollution which is the main cause of concern. As I mentioned, air pollution due to aviation or air travel is more than just the carbon dioxide. The exhaust of an aircraft contains nitrous gases, water vapor, sulphates, soot, particles. All of these create a direct impact on the climate. And the contribution to the global warming in proportion to CO2 is shown. The total contribution varies from approximately 2 percent to 5 percent. So, the emissions of the aircraft which cause problems are as mentioned hydrocarbons and sulphates. Now, in 2020, it is expected that there would be 24,000 commercial jet aircraft operating. Now, this is without taking into consideration the effect due to the N-COVID-19 or the coronavirus pandemic. The global flights last year in 2019, they contributed to 915 million tons of carbon dioxide. And it is the amount to around 2 percent of all human induced CO2 emissions. So, although there is a lot of noise about air pollution being created by aircraft, but actually the carbon dioxide emissions are only just 2 percent. Other activities like burning of coal, burning of wood and industrial and factory exhausts actually cause much more carbon dioxide emissions and also the automobiles. By 2050, it is estimated that 43 giga tons of carbon dioxide will be released in the air due to air travel. The problem is that when there are NOx emissions and in the air, it leads to the creation of ozone and that creates to increased global warming effect. Aviation emissions have increased by about 90 by 5 percent between 1990 to 2016. So, in around 26 years, we have kind of doubled the emissions. This is because of the increased number of passengers which travel and also increased number of aircraft, both. The NOx emissions have gone up by nearly half between the same period. And the hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide and particulate emissions, they are relatively the same. They have not gone up very much high. This is because of the advances in the propulsion technology. But the NOx and the CO2 emissions still are a major, major cause of concern. Another relatively unknown form of air pollution is the creation of contrails behind the aircraft. So, the aircraft design has remained almost the same in the last 50 years. Whereas, if you look at automobiles, they have done much more in the field of reduction of emissions as compared to aircraft. Now, water vapor and oxygen in the atmosphere creates what is called as contrails or those clouds which we see behind the aircraft. And these clouds are called as contrail introduced cirrus clouds. The problem with them is that they trap infrared rays and the global warming effect of these is actually 3 times that of the global warming because of carbon dioxide. The exhaust of the engine also emits soot particles and these soot particles they act as nuclei for condensation of water vapor and that is what causes these contrails. Let us have a look at a video showcasing the effect. The aviation industry has long been criticized for its climate warming carbon emissions. But according to Science Magazine, a new study suggests that another byproduct of airplanes has an even bigger warming effect. The culprit? The white contrails planes leave behind them in the sky. These high flying clouds are too thin to reflect much sunlight, but ice crystals inside them can trap heat. A 2011 study suggests that the net effect of these contrail clouds contribute more to atmospheric warming than all the other carbon dioxide produced by planes since the dawn of aviation. So now let us see the efforts being taken to reduce the emissions. First is to utilize chemistry to provide cleaner fuels which can reduce the emissions. Now it should be kept in mind that the fuel smoke point and the freeze point energy content has to be considered while estimating methods to create cleaner fuel. And the fuel that we create should be compatible with existing systems. It should not require new engines or major changes in the existing power plants and in many cases it should be possible to blend the fuel that you create artificially with the natural fuel. Over a large last few years, Haifas which are hydro-processed esters and fatty acids, they have been approved for use on aircraft as fuels. So when we use Haifas in the fuel, in the renewable fuel, we lead to reduced NOx emissions. And it has already been demonstrated to be viable for usage. Several experiments and several flights have taken place. And also there are many airports which are creating biofueling options. For example, the Stockholm and Oslo airports are having such special facilities. So more and more airports are becoming greener now and give a provision for providing the renewable fuels. There are three types of artificial or cleaner fuels. One is called as the biomass to jet fuel in which synthetic jet fuel is created by biomass pyrolysis. There is also alcohol to jet in which ethanol or butanol deoxygenation is carried out to create the jet fuel. And there is a third one called as power to jet in which you use hydrogen and carbon dioxide synthesize these together and straight away create jet fuel from there. So these are the three types of artificial or cleaner fuels which have been attempted by several scientists. Now let us look at how much air pollution is created by various aircraft types. So we see that the belly freight contributes to only about 11% and the dedicated freighter about 8%, together they only account for something like 19% of the total, 171 million megatons of carbon dioxide emissions. But the passenger operations, the narrow body, the wide body and the regional in which actually the largest contribution is the narrow body. The aircraft like Boeing 737 or A320, these are narrow body aircraft. They contribute to 43% and the wide body aircraft because they travel longer distances and per capita they consume less amount of fuel, hence give you lower emissions, they give you slightly lower emissions. Together it accounts for something like 76% and if you add another 5% because of the passengers in the regional transport aircraft. So a total of 81% of the fuel consumption is because of the passenger operations. So let us have a look at one segment that is the wide body aircraft. So we did a small comparative study of emissions by four transport aircraft. All four of these aircraft are shown here, they are all wide-bodied aircraft and this was carried out using a software called as PianoX, PianoX. So PianoX is actually a software which is available online and you can download it and use it that there is a trial version available free of cost in which some aircraft are already available. So these four are among those aircraft which are available. So we carried out comparison of emissions using PianoX. This is an analytical tool in which you get the aircraft emissions and also the W fuel, fuel weight. The inputs to this software are the specific aircraft name so that the correct data file can be taken which contains the aircraft information, number of passengers, range and the payload weight and the software calculates emissions during each mission segment. So we carried out two comparative studies, in one we said that we will allow the aircraft to travel to its maximum range that it can travel and then calculate the emissions and the other one is for a comparison we said we will go for a fixed value of range and we will see what are the emission levels created by four aircraft for the same fixed value of range. So these are the four aircraft as I mentioned all of them are wide-bodied aircraft the Boeing 767 which started operations in 1998 and it is still operating although recently I think it has been retired. Airbus A340 which began in 1991, Airbus A380-800 which began in 2003 and recently many airlines have retired their Airbus A380s but some of them are still operating them and the Boeing 787-8 are relatively new aircraft which appeared in 2011. So we have taken aircraft which start from 1998 and go right up to 2011 the year of introduction. So if we compare the emissions we see that the highest emissions of NOx appear in Airbus A380 and then the next number is for 340 the lowest values are for Boeing 787-8 and just slightly higher than that is Boeing 767-300. If you look at the hydrocarbons we see that the Airbus A380 has very low values and also Airbus A340 Boeing 74787-8 has little bit high values but very high values are seen for Boeing 767-300. If you look at the carbon dioxide emissions again a large aircraft like Boeing 7 Airbus A380 does have the highest value of emissions followed by A340 then 787 and then 767 rather 767 is slightly higher and finally if we look at the carbon dioxide carbon monoxide emissions once again the highest values are for Airbus A380 followed by 787-8 then 767-200 and finally the lowest ones for 342. Let us move on to noise pollution which basically is undesirable sound. Let us have a look at a short video that explains to us what causes aircraft noise. Fortunately technology is helping us manage it better but first what causes aircraft noise? It's air hitting the front of the plane and having to divert around the body of the aircraft and the sound of the engines. It's loudest during takeoff when the engines are working hardest and when landing due to increased air resistance when the landing gear is lowered and wing flaps extend. As for how much noise here are some noises we hear every day and here are louder noises bearing in mind that we all hear noises differently. Now if you're one kilometer from the end of the runway at Brisbane Airport during takeoff a twin engine aircraft is around 82 decibels. While no one lives that close to the runway you can still hear aircraft as they're flying overhead even many kilometers away from the airport but how loud it seems can depend on the weather. Low cloud traps aircraft noise and amplifies it down and rain wind and cloud also dictate what routes planes fly and how they land. These routes too will affect how loud they seem to someone on the ground. However air traffic control technology and airport design are helping reduce the impact for people on the ground. So what are the issues because of noise pollution? First important point is that aircraft engine noise can go beyond 140 decibels at takeoff and that's very very loud okay. During cruising and landing the noise levels are much lower 75 to 85 decibels okay. Now the problem is that if you have a prolonged exposure to noise levels beyond 90 decibels it can cause permanent hearing loss and that's very bad news. In the European Union a study has shown that nearly 1 million people are living near the airport they are subjected to around 50 aircraft noises per day which have a decibel level of more than 70. This was in 2017. Now this number has gone up by 60 percent compared to 2005. So in about 12 years we have had 60 percent higher exposure to noise. So this is the main concern. Let's see how the aircraft noise can be managed. Since the early 1970s Brisbane airport has been designed to minimize aircraft noise impacts on residential homes as much as possible. Key to this is the buffer zone that has prevented homes being built too close to the airport runways. To measure the buffer zone you draw a line from the end of the runway centre line to the nearest residence. The buffer zone from the current main runway is 6.7 kilometres and the new Brisbane airport runway will have a non-residential buffer zone of six kilometres. These are the largest buffer zones of any major Australian airport. The new runway was positioned as far north and as close to Morton Bay as possible for this very reason. Same goes for its direction on the ground. A north-south direction and the two-kilometre separation between the two runways means compared to today more arrivals and departures over Morton Bay rather than over residential areas. Brisbane airport corporation, air traffic controllers and airlines all work together to minimize noise as much as possible. So that was an example of one airport Brisbane taking proactive attempts to reduce the exposure to the people living nearby due to noise. Let us have a look at which part of the aircraft creates more noise. So as you can see in this picture the one which are marked red that is the turbine combustion chamber compressor fan and the jet. They are the ones that create the loudest noise and the ones which are green like the wings, flaps, gear doors, main beer, nose gear etc. They create the least noise and the interference and other things are in between the two. So there are essentially three types of noise. There is displacement noise which is created because of displacement of air around an aircraft surface. So when you have a bluff body or when you have edges it creates noise because air is displaced and also when you have exhaust of piston engines and if you have shock waves they also displace air and hence cause noise. Then we have force noise or noise due to the generation of forces because of the pressure fluctuations in the boundary layer. So rotating components or airfoils like rotors, fans, compressors they are the ones that create the force noise. And then we have flow noise that is whenever we have turbulent flow and wake conditions at that time there is a noise created because of the flow itself. So we call it as a flow noise. So among these the displacement noise tends to be little bit lower. The largest values are basically the force noise and the flow noise. And the exhaust of the jet engine is the biggest reason for creating the noise. Let us have a look at the components of the aircraft. Essentially you can break down noise on the aircraft either attributed to the power plant or attributable to the airframe. In power plant we see that the gas turbine noise is the most important one apart from the jet noise and this is proportional to the bypass ratio. Higher the bypass ratio lesser will be the noise. The presence of inlet guide vanes and outlet guide vanes in the fan and compressor are a big reason for noise. In the combustor and the turbine the noise level reduces where as the bypass ratio increases. The jet exhaust as I mentioned which is the largest component of noise actually the proportional to the 8th power of the jet exhaust velocity. In piston engines noise is created because of the combustion the valves and the exhaust. Coming to the airframe mostly the noise is due to the aerodynamics it is called as aerodynamics noise and it is caused because of the aerodynamic forces. The sound power can be shown to be proportional to square of the drag coefficient proportional to the area and sixth power of the velocity. So if you reduce the velocity there is a drastic reduction in the sound power of aerodynamic noise also as well as the jet exhaust noise. If you reduce the area and also if you reduce the drag there will be lower noise. The airframe noise is proportional to the wing loading is proportional to the takeoff weight and proportional to V square. Let us see how we do the assessment of noise pollution. How is it measured? So there is a one term called as LDEN which is basically the average sound pressure level per year for day evening and night. However annoyance created by noise during the day is still tolerable. In the evening it is more troublesome and it is the most troublesome in the night. Therefore, there is a penalty of 5 decibels on the noise levels for the noise created in the evening and a penalty of 10 decibels for the noise created in the night time. There is something called as L night which is the average sound pressure level per year for only the nights. So LDEN stands for L level of day evening and night. So that is why it is LDEN and then you have L night which is only for night. There was a study carried out at 47 major airports in the European Union. It was found that around 2.5 million people or more live inside the 55 decibel zone of LDEN and around a million people live inside that zone of 50 decibels. So a large number of people are actually living in the 55 decibel range. How is noise measured? One is called as the A weighted adjustment or DBA. This is one of the most common the most common term to measure noise is the decibel levels with adjusted which A weight adjustment. So the weighting is proportional to the frequencies and pitch of noise in this particular measure. So sounds which are in the high sensitivity range of human ear of 2 to 4 kilohertz we add 2 to 3 decibels for sounds. Then we also have a single event measures of noise. So what we do is calculate or estimate the noise due to one aircraft moment spread over around 20 seconds. So you can measure either L max which is the maximum sound level recorded in time in terms of the decibel or you can talk about the SEL or the sound exposure level that is total noise impact in time t. We also have some cumulative measures of noise. What we do in this is that we add the noise of all movements during the time interval t at a particular place. So you have LEQ which is the equivalent noise level and LDN which is the day and night average sound level. So using this information it is very important to draw noise contours which are nothing but depicting the noise exposure of a particular community over a contour map. So each line on the map corresponds to some specific value of noise exposure level and all these are ISO noise lines. The data is measured at different DB levels and FAA has come up with a very interesting tool called as AEDT or Aviation Environment Design Tool. This has got modules both for emissions as well as for noise. So it models noise, emission and fuel consumption and it is a tool developed by the Federal Aviation Administration of USA. It is consistent with ECOW model and database. It calculates the annual noise contours and earlier there was a noise model called as INM integrated noise model. This particular tool replaces that particular tool. So you draw a noise contour by looking at the noise data, looking at the number of flights and looking at the flight tracks. Together superimposing all of them together you get the noise contour. So here is an example of a typical noise contour. This one is recorded at the London Heathrow Airport on a particular runway 27L. So we see here that there is an orange band, then there is a red band and then there is a blue band. So the orange band or the yellow band corresponds to the noise contour created by Boeing 787-8. The red band this is for 85 decibels. So all these contours correspond to 85 DBA, noise contours. So we see that much larger area is exposed under noise level of 85 or below for Boeing 787-9 compared to dash 300 ER of 767. Another way of showing the contour is to map them over the geographical layout. So here you can see that various colour schemes are used. The lines which are in red colour are the exposure beyond 72 decibels in this case and the lines which are outside the green lines they are noise levels which are more than 57 dB. Let us look at some regulations. We see now how law comes to our rescue in tackling and handling the noise requirements. So first of all in law we have to quantify the disturbance that is caused due to noise. So we use it for either airport certification or aircraft certification. As far as the airport is concerned what we do is day and night contours of 65 dB are drawn at an airport or near an airport and there is a term defined as community noise equivalent level which I will talk about in little bit in the future. So CNEL is a parameter which is very important. This is basically a weighted average of noise gathered over 24 hour period and of course there are different waiting sectors for day, evening and night. Obviously there will be less sector for day more for night and highest more for evening and highest for the night. As far as you talk about aircraft certification we define something called as perceived noise level in decibels P and dB. So what we do here is we do the waiting here on the basis of sound pressure level. So that is how you can get the perceived noise level. Then in EP and dB this is effective perceived noise level in decibels. The effect of duration is also increased because if a noise is sporadic then it causes disturbance but limited. But if it comes for a long duration it seems worse. So EP and dB is more important not just a single P and dB value. It caters for spikes in the frequency spectrum and also the various tones that are created. So this is the comparison of CNEL the community noise equivalent level for various activities like urban, suburban on the location. So we see that there is a fairly large band available here for the lower side. So just gives you an idea that there are these four sites at which we have measured the sound. Let us look at the airworthiness regulations for noise. So the acceptable level of noise is 80 EP and dB and there is a federal aviation regulation part 36 in the USA. It gave something like stage 1 noise levels till December 1969. This was applicable to engines with BPR or bypass ratio more than 2. Then in January 1985 stage 2 regulations were put into place for aircraft having a max takeoff weight more than 75,000 pounds and then stage 3 came in December 1999. So we were told that aircraft which belong to stage 2 will not be able to operate in the US after 31st December 1999 but there was some small point there. So there was a 4 year waiver if 85% of the aircraft of an airline complies and the aircraft new aircraft has already been ordered to take care of the shortfall. In that case, there is a waiver of 4 years available. If as far as the international civil aviation is concerned, there is an NX-16 which is applicable for the noise levels. And in the UK regulations, the BCAR regulations, civil aviation authority regulations, section N is applicable to the noise. So the most common of these is the FHR 36 and as far as FHR 36, noise is to be measured at 3 places. There is a takeoff noise which is measured at a distance which is 6.5 kilometers ahead of the takeoff point. So it is 6.5 kilometers ahead from the point where the aircraft starts operating. There is sideline noise which is measured 450 meters along the side of the aircraft anywhere along the line, preferably just next to the aircraft during takeoff. And the third is the approach noise. So for that, what we do is we ask the aircraft to come in and approach slowly and at during approach, we specify the values to be tested for. And the approach point is basically 2000 meters behind the it is measured. The noise level is measured on the ground 2 kilometers behind the point where the aircraft is normally going to come to and stop after landing. The FHR 36 stage 2 noise limits are as mentioned, they are a function of the mass of the aircraft. So during sideline and approach, you allow larger noise levels but during takeoff you allow comparatively same or lower noise levels. And there is a formula available for calculating the EP and DV as a function of the log of the weight of the aircraft, log of the coefficient B and log of C. So moving on, let us look at how the noise can be reduced. So there are noise is basically because of the engine and the airframe. So of which engine is the bigger culprit. So we will first look at how the engine noise is reduced. So let us first see how the engine noise has gone down as per Rolls Royce. So we see that there were Chapter 3 regulations till 2005 in which there was some baseline noise level. Then in Chapter 4 in the year 2005, we got some new aircraft and the noise levels actually came down by around 10 decibels. And then there was another stage in which some aircraft such as the supersonic transport were giving the same benefits. But many others were giving around 18 to 17 decibel lower noise level which is a quite a large achievement. You can see the noise levels of various aircraft as the designs have evolved how they are reducing with time. And now we are under the Chapter 4, Chapter 14 regulations and now there is an aim. So every aircraft actually becomes a benchmark. It becomes better than a previously designed or previously approved aircraft. Let us have a look at some reduction technologies for noise. So increase of bypass ratio of the turbofan engines from you know 5 is to 1 etc to 12 is to 1 that reduces the noise drastically. Because with this higher bypass ratio the nacelle diameter increases and due to that the jet exhaust noise decreases. And you know that the noise is powered proportional to the 6th power of velocity or 8th power of velocity in the exhaust. So therefore, immediately there is a reduction in the noise if the nacelle diameter reduces. Then we also can do shape optimization of the engine duct and you can insert aircraft engine can you can insert acoustic liners in the aircraft engines. These are internal wall liners which dampen the engine noise. And then there are some techniques like chevrons which are special treatment of the exhaust nozzle to reduce the jet blast noise by controlling the extent of airflow in the exhaust. So here is an example of chevron nozzles mounted on Rolls Royce Trent 1000 aircraft for Boeing 787. So chevrons have been developed by Boeing GE and NASA. And the pressure of the airflow through the combustion chamber used to be always kept more than that of the bypassed air. This is always the case. So whenever you have high pressure air and you have bypassed air and the meat together, it can lead to a loud shockwave and that can create noise. So one example or one solution is enhanced mixing of the exhaust air in the intake or in the engine, so that we do not encounter these problems. So if you provide stream by water city, then you can enhance the mixing and you can lead to lower jet noise. Here is another example of a double chevron mounted on this engine. So where is the double? You can see that there is one chevrons are commanded here and also on the in the exhaust of the inner aircraft. Here we have not touched the inner aircraft at all. We kept it as it is. So here is the effect of chevrons. You can see that in the top figure there are no chevrons. So the turbulent kinetic energy is quite large even up to the end. The moment you install chevrons, there is a movement of the boundary air. So it is very much possible that the exhaust can be literally stopped and the exhaust, the engine will just take in ambient air and it will be utilized for the entire functioning. So you can see that the turbulent kinetic energy distribution is far more rapid and disturbed in case of that with chevrons compared to that without chevrons. Let us now look at some engine noise reduction concepts. One way of reducing the engine noise is to use ultra high bypass ratio gear turboprops. So what happens here is that there will be noise reduction because there will be lower fan tip speed. You could go for gear turbo fans also or you could go for open rotor or prop fan engines and also here what happens is the noise reduces because of acoustic reinforcement and you can also go for intercooled recuperated cycle. So these four techniques can be followed to reduce the noise of the engine. So in the ultra high bypass ratio this is an example of Rolls Royce ultra fan. You can notice how large the outer portion of the wing is. So the core air is in a very large area and the bypass happens to a very small area above this black liner. So it is a gear turbo prop which has got the bypass ratio of 15 is to 1 and usage of these technology has been shown to reduce the noise by approximately 15 decibels. Now we have seen about gear turbo prop. Can we apply a similar technique to turbo fan? So that is the attempt in a gear turbo fan engine. This is the conventional engine. It is a conventional engine and this one is a gear turbo fan. Then we have concepts like open rotor or prop fan installation. So here is an example of UDF. So these are two counter rotating propellers which are mounted on the rear side. There is a fuselage and then there is an engine and both of them are powering the same engine. One option is to use intercooled recuperated cycle engine in which we increase the cycle thermodynamic efficiency by using heat exchangers. The intercooler is a stage that cools the air between the compression stages so that the air can be given larger thermal energy. So that is called as a recuperator. It recovers the waste heat from the exhaust and puts it back. So you get preheat, you get compressed air because of that the fuel weight consumption reduces and hence the emissions also reduce. As far as the airframe is concerned, even here we can use some techniques to reduce the noise. Although the level of noise caused by the airframe is much lower compared to the aircraft noise, we can use an active aero elastic wing where morphing can be used to change the shape of the wing and then control the noise levels. You could for example use adaptive compliant trailing edge and we will talk about it. This particular scheme goes for flexible trailing edge wing flaps. So it results in lower takeoff and landing noise and higher aerodynamic efficiency. Or we can also go for landing gear noise reduction technology as attempted by NASA. So landing gear and cavity during approach are the main reason for the air flow noise. So here is an example of the adaptive wing. Conventional flaps are on the trailing edge and they are deflected mechanically. In the adaptive wing we use actuators which are going to change the trailing edge angle directly and also the leading edge if required. So there can be adaptive leading edge and adaptive trailing edge. So this leads into a highly flexible wing with significant weight reduction because flaps are very heavy in normal circumstances. Usage of active aero elastic wing leads to 5 to 20 percent lower weight of the structure and the actuators can change the shape of the aircraft. But these shapes are to be carried out as per the flight condition. However it may be noted that this is a very tall order. It is very easy to say but to get this thing working is not very easy. One such project was tried out by NASA Air Force you know at Armstrong Flight Research Center by AFRL and they tried to use this compliant trailing edge to try and reduce the noise levels. Some studies have been done to reduce the noise of the landing gear. Here is an example of, so this video shows the creation of noise at various locations. Finally we can also reduce noise by changing the operational practices. One example of that is a scheme called as the continuous climb or descent approach. It is a CDA. And in current day operating scenario the aircraft go into climbs in steps. And even the descent also is in steps. This is for the ease of the aircraft. So that the traditional profile is this blue profile which involves flight at these steps. But if you have a continuous climb profile and a continuous descent profile then the weight of the fuel consumed has been shown to reduce. About half million ton of carbon dioxide per year can be reduced by using only this CDA approach. During night time you can reduce the noise level by about 1 to 5 decibels. But the extent of the CDA that you can follow depends on the air traffic that you are operating and also it may not be easy to implement it in an operational airport. So at Mumbai airport CDA trials were carried out and finally it was decided that we will not be going to implement this in the near future. Before I stop I would like to acknowledge Dimitri Simmos for allowing us to use the Piano X software. He has given some sample data for a few aircraft and we have used those aircraft and run the software to generate the values of the emissions as discussed. And also I would like to thank Sameer Sharif, a student of aerospace engineering at the University of Limerick in Ireland who worked for me as a summer intern and helped in creating this tutorial. Thank you, Sameer. Thanks for your attention and there are some references which are available. So you can pause the video and look at these references for various specific topics. Thanks for your attention.


Hi, I'm EPI. I'm EPI, brought to you by Digikey and Advertisement this week, and it's Renaissance. Renaissance. Renaissance. Renaissance is a maker of microcontrollers and boards, and this week we're going to be covering the RA series of microcontrollers. They were just featured on digikey.com. And even though we've never used Renaissance chips, these chips are all ARM Cortex. I think they're M33s, M4s, maybe a few M0s and M7s. So if you're using other chips that are in the ARM Cortex family, it should be fairly easy to retarget your designs, and they've got some good stuff. In particular, because they have to pick one product out of the entire group, the RA4M1 is what I'm looking at, and I'm looking at it because, as I'll show later, it's used in the new upcoming Arduino R4. So we'll go into the details of all this datasheet. There's just a jam-packed Cortex M4 chip. Renaissance for people in the West who may not have used it, because again, it's not a huge brand, it's not conglomerate, it's the merging of Hitachi Mitsubishi Electric and NEC. These are Japanese silicon vendors, and they kind of merged forces in a video that we actually showed before. It's really cool. You can check it out on their YouTube. It's got the samurai who cuts through complexity and deploys good silicon. The reason I understood in looking at this is, first off, it popped up on the digikey.com slash new products listing. Even though it's not super new, it was kind of a featured product, and I was like, oh yeah, that's the same family of chips that's in the new Arduino R4, and we signed up for the Early Access program, and we're getting these chips, so we'll make sure that it works with all of our libraries. And one of the things is that the R4 is really changing directions from the previous versions of the Arduino Uno, which were based on 8-bit microcontrollers, such as the AppMega8, 168, and 328, and those were 8-bit AVR chips with 32K of RAM at the most, maybe 32K of flash, 2K of RAM at the most. So why move to this chip, the 32-bit Cortex-M4 RA-4M1? And we'll look at it, but it's got a lot of good peripherals, and one of the big things is, of course, it is 5-volt compliant, as well as has native USB, so it's a really nice step up from an 8-bit microcontroller, and you're looking at this, it's got a lot of peripherals and capabilities that you would expect from both the best of the 8-bit world and the best of the Cortex world. So the biggest thing, of course, is that this chip is 5-volt compliant, and I don't mean like some STM chips, you can run them at 3.3 volts, and then you can kind of pipe 5 volts into one of the IO pins as long as it's powered. You really can drive this whole thing at 5.5 volts, which is at max 5 volts nominal, and that's quite unusual, because, again, pretty much every ARM Cortex chip we've seen has been 3 volts. There are a few chips, I think microchip makes the same C21, and that one is 5-volt compatible, but doesn't have native USB, so this kind of has the best of both worlds, it's got that 5-volt logic capability and high currents, it's got some high current pins as well, but ARM Cortex M4 power. The peripherals are really great on this chip, for example, the ADC converter, it's pretty common to have an AC converter, but this one does 14-bit conversion, that's nice, most top out at maybe 10 or 12, it's also got a DAC, a 12-bit DAC, so it's kind of nice, of course there's DMA, temperature sensor, sure, comparator, sure, but there's also like op-amps built in, there's four op-amps that you can configure, and I think you can set gains and do inversions and set up stuff so your small signal analogs can be then piped into the ADC. For serial communication, that's your new standard, peripherals, I2C, SPI, new art, there's two of each, which is cool, so there's also SSI-E, which I believe is just I2S, another thing that's really nice, it's got CAN, not all Cortex chips have CAN, plus natively, you'll need a transceiver, but the CAN module is built in, so that's kind of cool if you're interested in using this with CAN-Best Networks, because those are 5-volt logic networks, so you don't need like a transceiver with a separate boost converter, because again, you can power everything here off of 5 volts. Another couple interesting things that you don't normally see on Cortex chips is that it's got a segment LCD controller, so like LCDs that you see on calculators, you can run those directly, you don't need a separate chip, very handy if you're doing a product where you want LCD, even though a lot of times people use TFTs these days or OLEDs, there's still a lot of products that would use a segment LCD, and this makes sense, Renaissance makes a lot of chips that are used in white goods, and a lot of white goods have LCDs. Capacitive touch sensing unit, also very common in white goods, because you don't want to have buttons that can mechanically be damaged, capacitive touch will work through glass or plastic and can work with waterproof things that are in the home, kitchen, or bathroom. And of course it's got the native USB 2.0, full speed, so that's your 12 megabits per second, you can power directly from the USB port, and then there is a separate 3.3 volt LDO, but it's internal, it's just needed for the logic level, signaling, shifting for the D plus and D minus lines. There's a few versions, all of them are going to have 256K of flash, 32K of RAM, I forgot to know, but they also have a 2K of like separate flash, so it's basically like EEPROM, then the main flash memory size, you don't have to worry about, oh, you know, I want to store some non-volatile memory, but I don't, I want to make sure it's kept separate from the main code, they provide a separate code area, it does come in a couple different packages depending on how many GPIOs you want, up to 100 pins. Right now, you know, I saw them to Jackie and Stock, at least, they definitely had the 48 and 64 and 40 pin versions, QFN and the LQFP as well. Another thing that you sent me that was kind of neat was Gadget Unisos, which is a couple years old, it's not a new thing, but they made really cool, like, Sakura, pink-themed dev boards for all of their popular chipsets, and somewhat interesting, like one of them was, like, the Citrus board, where they're kind of middle left, is specifically for use in the Ruby language, so I don't know if it has like an embedded Ruby interpreter or it compiles from Ruby to microcode, there's like a kind of a Flora lily pad-esque ground board, the GR Mango uses one of their high-end chips, and it's, you know... You're an investor in Arduino, no? I hope this is a new Arduino lineup. Yeah, be cool. The Karumi is a little bit like a Tinti or Pro Micro, and then the Mango is Raspberry Pi-ish, and then the Leechy and the Peach are kind of Arduino-ish size. The IDE, they made some changes so it's pink. Yeah, it's pink, and it's Arduino compatible, you know, they forked it and tweaked it to make it work with their boards, could be that they actually can change purple things for their SDK, and another thing that's interesting is, it's a different chip than the Uno R4, by the way, so this is an older project, and it looks like it even had this chip has native Ethernet, which is why they stuck an RJ45 on there, as well as USB host. This is a quite an advanced board. They also have a web compilation system, which I thought was kind of neat, so I opened it up, and it's like, yeah, you can compile from within the web browser, and I guess you download the bin file, and you can drag it over like the bootloader, and it's got like this kind of sakura themed to it, and then the packaging also is from this artist. I couldn't find any photos of it online that I could use, but the packaging for these boards is also very beautiful, from a Japanese artist and has like these Japanese themes. So that's a separate project in this, but I thought it would be interesting, you know, if you were interested in the family of boards, you want to try their online compilation system, check it out with the sakura chipset. Can you go back one? It uses the RX 633N, and a lot of stuff doesn't really penetrate into the Western market, but it's always good to have competition, and you know, I was talking to a friend of mine who just came back from Tokyo, and she said, you know, when you're in Japan, everything is just a little bit nicer. It's like five to 10% better than it would be in the US, and so, you know, I think the documentation and usage, and I'd like that, you know, the board that could have gotten away with future, sorry, fewer peripherals on the RA4 series, but I think they're like, oh yeah, also LCD, also Canvas, also, you know, DMA, etc. So, oh goodness, sorry, go back one. So the, it's called, the full part name is the R7FA4M1, a series, there's a couple, so for example, this is the QFN, there's also the QFP, which is the highlight. There's also a dev board for that RA4M1 series if you do not want to wait for the Uno R4, I'm sure it'll come out soon, but if you're like, I just want something immediately tomorrow, they do have a dev kit for this chip, which comes with a Sega J-Link debugger with a separate USB, so you can like debug, like a full, you know, GDB debugging system, as well as the native USB, and as like a couple peripherals on there, like capacitive touch and potentiometer and push button, and also it's got current sensing areas, you can like remove the jumper. Available in Digikey. That's right. It's in stock. I'm so excited that we can do INFPI, and the parts are available. So check out Digikey, you know, they're doing more with Windows House, and I think, again, it's good, like even though I don't know many people who used these chips, it's always good to have more competition. I think, you know, we've had plenty of European and Western companies and American companies make chips based on the Cortex standard. Why not check out what's going on in Japan? So, how are you? Hi, on IPI? Hi, on IPI!


Hello, and welcome to this Eden NAP webinar. Thank you for attending. We have a lot of registrants, and we are still waiting for everyone to join the room. Meanwhile, feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat. Maybe tell us where you are from. And yes, we will start soon. So again, very happy to have you all with us. We are going to have around one hour session about mentors and enablers, and we will have some very interesting presentations from experts in this topic and people with a lot of experience who are willing to share with us their memories and their activities together with the students. I see people are already starting to write also in the chat. So feel free to tell us where you are from. And also, when you have questions for our panelists, feel free to use the Q&A section of the Zoom application. So my name is Vlad Mikhaelscu. I am the Eden NAP Steering Committee chair, and I come from the Polytechnica University of Timisoara, where I do a lot of research and teaching in relation to e-learning MOOCs, digital technologies, applications of the digital in culture, in entrepreneurship, and several other fields. Today's webinar is a special one because we talk about a topic which is maybe not so discussed in these types of webinars. And the Eden NAP is very happy to do this. Eden NAP is the Eden's network of academics and professionals and fights to have a better collaboration between professionals in our field and also to create some bridges of communication between various experts. So today's webinar, as I was saying, is something different from what we've done until now. And we wanted to see how to better help our fellow younger colleagues, the students, and how to better offer them possibilities for mentorship and how to enable them to reach those abilities and those competencies which we seek in them. And for this, as I said, we have pre-very good experts in this who are going to share their experiences. I'm happy to see we have participants from Croatia, from Sweden, from the United Kingdom, from Romania, and many other countries. And I encourage you, again, to introduce yourselves in the chat to tell us where you are from. Without making many more introductions, I will introduce our first panelist, our first speaker of the day. The first speaker is Antonela Poce. She currently holds the role of full professor in experimental pedagogy at the Department of Education and Humanities in the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, where she directs intellect. She is the head of the one-year post-graduate course of heritage education and digital technologies. Antonela is the scientific director of two post-graduate courses, annual museum education and the annual advanced studies in museum education at the University of Roma Tre. She coordinates national units within European project frameworks and she has been sharing international academic committees dealing with distance learning. She is an author of different publications of national and international relevance on the topics of innovation, assessment and use of technology in teaching and learning in the context of heritage education experiences. And for those of us who are familiar with Eden and Eden NAP, we all know and I hope you also know that Antonela is very dear member of the NAP community as where she held the position of steering committee chair until last year. So Antonela, thank you so much for being back, being back home in the NAP. Good, thanks to you for this opportunity as I was saying. It's really a pleasure to me to be with you today back home as Vlad said, it's really the best way to represent this feeling today. So yes, I'll try to share my screen in order to start my presentation that wants to be support as Vlad correctly introduced this session today, support to anyone who is interested in helping the students, especially in higher education in finding their place, their identity also in connecting to the world of labor, so the workplace. So we have been working as a group, as Vlad told you, I'm now working at the University of Modern Age Emilia, Department of Education and Humanities, but I've been working for almost 20 years at the University of Roma Trem and we have been of course cooperating with this new center that I'm chairing at Modern Age Emilia, the Intellect Center, which is the center to work on the development of the enhancement, especially of cross-sectional skills and critical thinking in particular in the area of heritage education, but not only especially in technology applied in education and so innovative ways of working in education in general. Anyway, in this contribution of mine today, the reflection is focused on this link between higher education and the workplace, telling you about a pilot experience that we carried out thanks to the work of other colleagues from the University of Roma Trem, your Roma Trem University, where I used to be, Maria Rosaria Re, Carlo De Medio, Mara Valente, Alessandra Norgini. I think that those who are familiar with Eden already knows those names who are a part of the group and we will work together more and more openly. Anyway, what did we focus on, especially critical thinking as a place of linking between the workplace and higher education? It's really important to focus on critical thinking in my view, because as many sources say, and you can read it here, it is shared in many, many international documents that critical thinking skills are more and more considered by voter for human and social progress in terms of course of innovation, economic and knowledge growth and so on and so forth. The other aspect related to the importance of critical thinking is that, of course, being good thinkers, we are also active and autonomous citizens, so we really can use our skills and our way of contributing to society. And this is absolutely important. So as a Center for Museum Studies based in Roma Trai University, so let's say last year to be very simple, we worked on a different way of offering certain modules, also taking into consideration the need we had at the time to face a dramatic change when COVID-19 firstly appeared and we had to go online from one day to the other. So taking this into consideration as a framework, we worked on this pilot experience trying to enhance certain kind of activities related to analyzing, interpreting, evaluating and finding solutions through specific work-based activities. For this reason, we involved different stakeholders, different partners in our teaching and learning offer that were called to be part of the organization of teaching and learning and that contributed directly with specific activities that were designed taking into consideration the need to support critical thinking skills and the need to match also what these kind of partners that were mainly companies working in the field of education and heritage education in particular were asked to do. We worked on different research questions as you can see here and so I'll report about what we found related to this kind of research questions especially related to the student critical thinking indicators levels in this kind of teaching and learning activities. So the trend that we could identify through specific assessment and evaluation tools what is this critical thinking level perceived by the students themselves and which kind of other cross-sectional skills were supported through this kind of work-based activities. How the online activities including of course assignments and meetings with this kind of educational professionals could improve levels of critical thinking skills. Actually in this contribution, in this pilot activity participants were about 125 as you can see here from two different modules two different courses. One as you can see was one group was just represented by seven students but the other main group was made by 118 students from the first year of the course research methodology in education. Which kind of learning activities we worked on together with these stakeholders problem solving, of course dissertations or dissertation digital storytelling analysis and critical reflection. We had actually different meetings with different experts, I would say experts but as I said they were actually stakeholders, partners in our university activities and I'll give you some example but I don't want to spend too much time on that anyway you can see here the kind of topic and the activity that students were involved in for instance, building relationship through heritage was an activity where students were asked to work on specific case study analysis and then they had to report orally about what they found. Other kind of activities directly related to critical thinking development can be reported in this one an inquiry approach to museum education where students were to reflect and work together in groups on the inquirements related to the restoration of Palmyra site after the attack and the analysis of different scientific articles and then report again about their findings. Anyway, I think that it's important to focus on what we did collecting data related to the above activities especially those related to the evaluation phases. As I said, we tried to work on different kind of assessment tools of course, we worked on critical thinking assessment during the modules but also at the end of the activities we asked for the filling in of a questionnaire aimed at assessing their students' perception of transfers or competencies requirement after the activity. The tools were mainly true the first one is critical thinking evaluation rubric that we've been using for different activities that is being already tested and validated and is composed by six macro indicators. You have here a picture of the rubric so basic linguistic skills, justification, recommendation, relevance, importance, critical evaluation, innovation, novelty, a series of indicators, descriptors and marks. The second tool instead was another questionnaire actually this was actually a questionnaire not a rubric and it was organized as you can see here on different sections evaluation of the course, evaluation of the online meetings with stakeholders and the activity actually and the activity related to these meetings professional skills, self-assessment and cross-sectional terms of skills self-assessment through mainly legal scale options or multiple choice. Some data I'll go very briefly because I don't want to steal time but anyway just to tell you that regarding the quality of this kind of interactive meetings we can say that 56% of the participating students considers the activity absolutely good assigning the maximum score of five to the tools used and also to the organization of the meetings the videos, the PDFs, the slides, the materials that were given during these activities the language used by the stakeholders slash lectures is defined as extremely clear for 45.6% of the students and 22.4% of participants assign a score of five so the way this kind of meetings was organized was absolutely appreciated as you can see also from this graphic if we go to self-assessment of the most simulated transversal skills we see that there's great support related to the idea that through this work they could develop collaboration, creativity, critical thinking instead problem-solving and innovation were the least selected and this is something on which we need to reflect and work on you have a graphic that mainly reproduces what I said and regarding critical thinking skills we can say that there's a good improvement in fact both the courses and according also to the indexes that we calculated related to statistics significance of the evaluations we can say that there's always an improvement from the first to the last activity and also standard deviation is supporting involve the groups of course one was a very small group but what is interesting is of course the larger group where we worked together as you can see here the distribution of the scores is really encouraging so to conclude we can say that this pilot experience of course has a large room for improvement but it presents some important indications first of all for the implementation of certain kind of online learning paths what we realized really was that notwithstanding the difficulty at the very beginning in this kind of adaptation from a mixed blended learning course actually mainly online course the improvement in the quality but also in the appreciation and in certain important development attitudes and skills in the students was really relevant and important especially if we manage involving those who are directly involved in the workplace and that should be more and more involved in higher education design for learning but for enhancement of quality that's my main thought regarding these kind of partnerships and of course the continuous instructional learning design is needed but in this kind of teamwork project so I think that's all for me now and I'm here available for any questions now and as you prefer thank you so much very interesting presentation and research as always for me I think the most intriguing aspect is the fact that for the self-assessment of most stimulated transversal skills we have collaboration and creativity there in the top but then we have innovation at the bottom I think the students don't trust themselves too much in fact that's my thought in fact because actually we don't have time but if you're interested I can send you also some examples of what they produced actually they were innovative and so because creativity and innovation are very close but in their self-assessment they couldn't understand how much they were innovative maybe also the concept the idea of innovation is not so clear sometimes and we have one question in the chat also a very quick question from Uwe Matias Richter a research question looking at the link between learning on the course and the workplace applying learning to practice and critical thinking so let me get that looking can you repeat that from Uwe Matias Richter was there a research question looking at the link between learning on the course and the workplace applying learning to practice and critical thinking no actually but that's a very good suggestion Uwe and we'll as I said with that was a start but we really need to improve our ways of also assessing of self-assessing by the students their work so we'll introduce that because of course many issues were in a way implied but not so open so that's a very interesting point thank you thank you Antonela we will see if maybe participants have more questions after we finish absolutely yes yes yes and I encourage attendees to write their questions in the Q&A section and also people who are watching on YouTube you can write in the chat and we will answer here live we move now to the second speaker of the day second panelist and it is a great honour for me to introduce for the first time in an Eden webinar Julia Gonzalez-Ferreras who was awarded the Bo Gregersen award in 2011 for elaborating designing and coordinating the innovative project tuning educational structures in the world together with Robert Wagenar based on close cooperation of hundreds of academics from Europe and around the world tuning has contributed to the modernisation of higher education by developing an approach for designing and implementing curricula using the student-centred approach and the concept of key competencies that comes as focal points as I said a great honour Julia please the floor is yours thank you, thank you very much it is a pleasure to be with you my first time here in Eden even though I know about it you are too famous to be ignored so anyhow what I have done in this case is a reflection on mentoring and the importance of that with in relation to the students so if I will share my presentation I think somebody was asking for a full yeah a full screen okay so what I'm going to talk about is a reflection that brought us to prepare something which is a new project on actually assessment of competencies with the students but that's what I wanted to say today is something about what we have learned in relation to mentoring during this last period what may be implicit but do not always happen in learner-centred activities then competence-based learning a reflection on the critical dimension and then some good practices I think that one of the things that we have learned during this pandemic time is that this type of learning is very important and also the beauty of linking both distance learning with the presence of the professor with the presence of the mentor here in Edem you have been pioneer of quality and I think it is very important to keep this idea in mind in relation to the future the importance of presence and proximity and I know that that can happen very often also through distant learning encounter but the importance of following the student this is the mentoring this old tool that touches the essence of learning I was considering how important it is for us as teachers to have a little bit carried away this is something that happens to me and I was reflecting and I want to share with you my reflections in the learner-centred learning I think it is very important the awareness of the capacities of the students and the only way of really getting to know the capacities by the close proximity the intense interaction with them whichever format it is the only way I think that we have of knowing the style of learning because I take mentoring in the straightforward sense and the mentoring is really knowing their capacities their style of learning, their difficulties their strengths and to be able to have to offer some kind of contrast in the process well in the title the idea was to help the students to get the competences and the competence based knowing the objective I wonder how often the students are really knowing the target of where they are going this is a reflection that they often do in the projects I am running with at the moment I am running in several of them and it is very important to be able to discover where they have understood where we are going because the mentoring could start really from knowing the objective knowing where we go the other aspect would be facilitating the road and working together with them and I think that going back to this competence based situation that we do, I think that all these issues would be very important relate to working with them to be able to understand where they are and so on now in the project we are doing in order to in other fields but we are doing teacher training education and looking at the different dimensions imagine that we feel that it is important for the teacher we came across and we emphasised very strongly the dimension of learner empowerment potential and creativity the previous speaker Antonella was talking about the strength in the thinking the critical thinking which we are all fascinated and see the importance and also when we think about the types of particular types of thinking creative thinking is related is another aspect in a way of critical thinking there again we were discussing of the strength the creating and focalising in the empowerment of the learner we are developing a number of indicators for this sketch which would be obviously with knowledge skills and wider competences situations we find actually that the whole issue of wider competences sometimes is better to start with in order to go back and think what kind of knowledge do they need for that but supporting the learner the holistic growth and development is something that in our capacity as mentors as first daters is very important to develop they are the second element that we were discovering and discussing is learner self-esteem and confidence I am now working with the students who are at the university and also we are developing non-formal learning for those students the capacity or the moment that they lose their esteem and confidence is really an important element of breaking the whole system of their capacity obtaining and gaining capacity in that of course the learner motivation and resilience this is another element that would be very relevant to see what type of knowledge what type of skills would be supporting this learning and finally obviously the whole aspect of tutoring how we carry out the tutoring and how they as teachers are able to follow that with the students the whole reflection on the impact or the importance of how we develop this capacity both as university teachers and students or professionals developing student teachers or people who will be future teachers of education would be very relevant I was just thinking of good practices that I think we would have to emphasise and the issue of giving feedback to people knowing exactly how many times we actually do this practice in the development of encouraging the essence of the things that are beginning to appear in their work or making them feel where they have actually gone on a different track and another very good practice is the whole issue of partnership with the students developing this situation where we work together with them I wanted to comment something about ASSE which I think is a very interesting project out of the ones we are doing which is incorporating students in learning centre in the students there a whole revolution is taking place in the universities which are participating in Latin America because in the project something that was very revolutionary and the commission would hardly allow us to do which is incorporating students into the whole process of development of learning what I hear the reports that I hear is that the universities are completely mobilised by the fact of having a partnership between the students and professors learning how to teach or learning how to give a better presentation or a better track to get the competence and another aspect that I wanted to mention in terms of good practices is learners as mentors and enablers I think they are again the capacity for student peer learning is a good practice that is extremely relevant I'm sure that you all practice it but I think it's worth mentioning it's worth reflecting as something to be not to forget it to be incorporated and obviously in the teacher mentorship which is in a way what I could see that you develop then reflecting or in conclusion I was just thinking looking back on my personal life it is the first time that I talk about it thinking of my personal experience I have never had more tutors in my life that I had when I was writing my PhD at Oxford University I had a model tutor I had a supervisor I had a team group of colleagues there was a very strong and the undergraduates also had a very high level of tutorship and what I learned from that period and I carried through my life is that the capacity to make the other person feel that their ideas are important that the capacity to create to innovate to think out of the box is important and perhaps it is an atmosphere or it was an atmosphere in which made everyone they felt very much encouraged to feel that things were possible now sometimes in some of the systems that I have been looking at before and after it I see that the mentorship to the students is rather rushed is not giving enough time potential and I just wanted to bring to the colleagues here this concern because I believe that this capacity or this tool is very relevant both in terms of competence based learning and in a student or learner center learning and also in the whole process of growth of our people now after the pandemic I think that probably we will revise our practices and the time given to different tools different practices and I thought I was very interested in this mentorship and facilitation that was put in front of me by Alfredo and say well think about it and I was interested to develop to encourage and to have the feeling that there is a very strong element there in the empowerment of our youth that can, should, must be done through our mentoring practices and through our mentoring capacity because their empowerment is very much the future and their empowerment really can bring them to fulfill what they wanted to have the needs of society looking at their training and development from whichever angle thank you very much and I just want to offer to you this reflection and if there is any comment I will be pleased to listen to it or to answer, thank you thank you so much Julia for this very warm presentation and for sharing your experience and also these personal memories which you shared with us I think Alfredo wants to ask a question I saw you unmuted I have one question for you you mentioned as a good practice and we know good feedback is easy to be given and therefore we forget it many times with our students we are mentoring but I was wondering if you can just share your approach on how to best give the bad feedback when students fail to accomplish the objectives we set for them and how is best to do that in order for them to still be motivated to continue to work this is an excellent question because it is a hard one but sometimes they can come to that conclusion themselves when you are reflecting and they can almost show the road of where they are they actually have thought about what they have done what they have presented I think that they are ways in which if you know the track they are going they know where they are, their learning style it would be very important to show them what they have done so this I think it would be much more if you know them on the potential that they have, that they could reach but they haven't reached if they have done a huge effort maybe the emphasis would be much more on the effort and how far they have got but there is still a little bit to go of the road you have mentioned the word being motivated and I think that being motivated is a very important element that must be kept and I think that saying this is as far as we have got perhaps you can emphasise either the effort or what little is still to be done how far the potential that this person can have there are certain elements that can be brought in the counterbalance of obviously mentioning and telling him or her very clearly what should be done and perhaps which route should be taken in order to get there and that is a very interesting question Thank you and that was a very interesting answer and a good approach and I encourage our colleagues who are attending to try to follow that advice you gave if any other participants want to ask questions to Julia or to Antonella or to Alfredo please feel free to do so in the chat or in the Q&A section at the end of the session I move now to the next speaker and this is a good colleague of mine from the Ida Knapp steering committee also an Ida executive committee member and an Ida senior fellow Alfredo Soiro from the University of Porto Portugal Alfredo holds a degree in civil engineering from the University of Porto, a PhD from the University of Florida who is part of our continuing education he was a founding member of EU SEN European University C Network RECLA and AOPEC many organizations related to education and universities his positions held were the Vice Presidency of EU SEN Vice Presidency of CEP, President of IACEE and many others his main interests are engineering education, continuing education and learning focusing on networking, international cooperation and student evaluation without further ado Alfredo please share your experience with us Yes I'll try, thank you very much for the kind words I'm a little bit concerned that I may be somehow duplicating the presentation of some of the topics I'm presenting because in fact I'll take this last remark from trying to put it sorry I don't know how to get out from here so I'll stop sharing and keep talking so I'll keep talking and then going back to where I was but the point is that the motivation is very important especially when we're talking about assessment which is a very important perspective of the students position in terms of making their own come on, I cannot see one moment I think I'm doing it Sorry for the delay and this question of motivation is related to the assessment and something that worries very much but goes in line with what Antonella said in the IACEE study and with the addition of mentoring and tutoring students and what I'm presenting for those who know me, I'd like to present things that I've been involved so that's what I'll do, I'll present four case studies I'll start from the last one which is in this case that it's called digital immigrant survival piece it is a project where we have 15 modules to help people that are not comfortable with the digital tools and the digital transformation of the communication and other aspects of life and one of the things that was agreed by the partners was to have this mandala, let's say this way of somehow understanding their own skills, so we have several degrees of domain of the skills we are handling it and we are using this mandala before each participant uses each one of the modules and afterwards so we had a perception not only we, those that are somehow mentoring the courses that are being handled by the learners but especially each one of the learners that is using this, it's where they are and where they feel they have progressed after attending the module, we are going to present this project in the synergy session of the next Seed and Conference in Madrid on the 22 to 25 of June this month, it's virtual and maybe you can attend and know a little bit more about this experience, so this is something that it's trying to help each learner to conduct their own efforts to acquire some competences in certain areas that are defined in this 15 modules. Now a second case is the tuning experience, we did it with Asia and it is this tuning with Asia, it was we're going to have a second edition and Julia probably knows more about this than me but what happened was that I was working on the civil engineering program and they invited me to attend a two day seminar in the University of Malaysia University of Sains in Penang it was interesting because it's a school where the programs are already based on outcomes based education so here is a list of the program outcomes for civil engineers I think you are interested in knowing in detail what they mean etc but they have it and the approach they have for other courses is the same, but what is interesting that I wanted to show you is this they have a platform that is called CODIS and this platform analyzes the progression of each student towards this program outcomes here is a sample it was sent by my colleague professor Ahmad but here is a sample of a student that has let's say placed in the middle of the population apparently according to the GPA and you see the progression and the intended let's say program outcomes attainment and their overview of the situation and the definition in which program outcomes they probably need to intervene so that's why this question of mentoring and enabling is very important in terms of making them happy, I always remember a situation where at least they know what they are for, they have the program outcomes and they know for which reason they are studied and this is interesting because they follow each student regularly and I think that every week I don't remember but they follow and they control their progress towards the program outcomes here is something that I wanted to show you that in this picture on the left the majority are women I don't know if this is a consequence but I don't think so it's an approach of the school and I'm very surprised to see so many women involved in education in this case in engineering education the third case and I'm speaking quickly because I'm just presenting the case studies that you may like to study later is this one that is on vocational education and training school, I'm an expert in Portugal, the ECAVET ECAVET is European Quality Assurance Education and Training and they have audits to have the label ECAVET and this is from one of the schools that I visit and as you can see they also have the same approach they have a platform where they analyze the behavior of each of their students and there are more screens and more perspectives on this platform but this is the usual and it's interesting that they have this denomination for monitoring the progress of the schools in Portuguese what you have in the title is the methodology from dating to marriage and marriage means to motivate the students to get involved in what they are learning and with the school and with the teachers it's a very interesting process on a vocational, like I said, on a vet school but higher education can learn a lot from this approach they have here different perspectives from evaluation to the chronogram of the activities their intended learning outcomes and competencies and reports from the teachers it's a very interesting school because they have two psychologists with the school to also help the progress of their students and also here again there's the platform that is called dating where they monitor the progress of each student not only towards the program outcomes but basically with their behavior their participation, their involvement their relationship with the other it's a very detailed intervention in the progress of the learning for each one of the students with this intervention from all of those involved when necessary and properly to try to make the learning much smoother and effective another, and this is the last case study this is where I'm involved this is one that I've been working the last years which is the use of ePortfolios where I use this with the students from the last year, graduating students they are between 21 and 23 years old but I think that it can be used in other levels and what it's done here with the ePortfolios is that they know for each one of the working weeks what are intended learning outcomes and they make a weekly report on the portfolio with what they think they acquire but what happens, and this again goes in line with what Antonella and Julia said that goes with the individual discussion with me, for each student each one of them talks with me when they are there sometimes they are not so I'll talk in the following week but talking about what they reported their difficulties have they learned what they demanded, what they didn't like or if not didn't like but they didn't understand well and how I can help them achieve the intended learning outcomes of course with the pandemic in this last year some of these discussions are virtual, personally except the bodily language of the students I think this communication was done virtually and it worked well but it's always better to have a face to face there's this look in the eyes of each other and like I said the bodily language which sometimes speaks more than many words and like I said this is the idea that it's behind this mentoring or tutoring and formative assessment that it's done just the last slide which goes in line with that one I said and I and Julia that assessment in English comes from the Latin verb acideric which means to sit with and I think that we are using a lot of assessment modes that don't provide possibilities for this mentoring and tutoring and adapting to each learner so this question of sitting with a learner is something that we have to consider like it's mentioned here by the quote that I placed here and we have to sit with the students and learn what they think, what's happening how can we help them and not how do I say treat them as numbers I had here another quote from a PhD student of mine that did a PhD precisely on assessment of students and she once turned to me and said well you know the student is a person not a number I don't know why she told me that it's right and we have to treat them as persons and we have to sit with them so this question of mentoring and enabling I think it's only possible with the individual sitting with each one of the learners I don't think one size fits all which is a danger of the online teaching right now we concede more than all some of us consider that one size fits all and one format will work for everyone so this is it and I'm stop sharing my screen so there are questions thank you Alfredo this was very interesting especially since we saw an approach in another part of the world so we can make the specific application to Asia so we can make maybe some comparisons in our heads there is a technical question for you in the Q&A and I will kindly ask you to answer that in typing about data and platforms but I have one question for you because you mentioned about the individual discussions with students and also I agree that the students are persons not numbers they try to do what the exact thing that you suggest however I am wondering what would be the best solution for scaling and if scaling can be done because we have colleagues who have 100, 150, 200 students how can they manage to mentor everyone with this individual approach let's put it this way I don't have an answer that it's black and white what I'm thinking is that when you deal with students you have many students you also have probably many teachers and many hours in your working schedule so it's really a question of planning your time I have about between 40 and 50 students and I can talk with them every week because I just how do I say just use the time of the classes we have a system in Portugal that it's not very common around the world but I use the practical schedules to talk with them and when we were having the pandemic we would schedule the time it's this one and that one but I think the results are more rewarding if you have 100 students I don't know it depends on the internal regulation but that is generally proportional to the work schedule so the hours you are assigned to teach and you just have to do it in accordance with your logistics and your regulations or if it cannot be done at least you should try if you don't meet with them every week I don't know but I'll type the answer the question is interesting what data do they use in the COPS platform to monitor progress is that they make regular examinations with the homeworks and the quizzes and that's how they verify the progression in terms of the program outcomes and they have an office that it's only dedicated to assessment for instance no professor can deliver an exam without the overview of this office that is in charge of verifying what is done and according to the policy or strategy evaluating the program outcome thank you for answering both questions now we still have some time to have a group discussion Antonina raised her hand on the scaling question you read my mind I wanted to add something to what Alfredo said actually in my experience especially in Italian universities we normally have very large classes and during this last lockdown I had the opportunity to work with very large classes and also the report that I presented related to some of the classes we had last year with large, large classes what I found out is that if you manage do project work with the students organizing them in different groups there's also a peer to peer mentoring system that comes in and motivation is really supported and actually especially this last term many students told me that not having the opportunity to go to the university and meet other people especially first years of the courses through this kind of online working in groups they had the opportunity to meet other students to exchange ideas to create groups that were able also to cooperate on other subjects I think that is not so easy even when you go face to face because sometimes you in large classes especially even if you sit close to someone and maybe you have some words with someone close to you but then that's it instead working together in groups online really help them and actually they use different kind of channels they use of course the teams that was the platform given by the university but they also cooperated through different channels so they met with WhatsApp or other kind of interactive tools so it's possible thank you Antonella I loved most the idea of peer mentoring I think that's great I also saw that sometimes this works in a miraculous way sometimes from people you don't expect but they step up and yeah exactly that's true we have some more questions and I would like first to read the question from Diana Andone is there a good approach to blend professional and personal mentoring how personal can you get as a mentor with your students and I saw that Antonella already answered this I would ask Julia to also answer this so how personal can we get as mentors with our students this is very difficult to draw a line but I think that we have a task with them which is to bring them to a particular profile to a particular personal development and I think that there is a task and going beyond that unless they come along with a question or a comment I don't think we should interfere in their lives however I think that it is important to know the difficulties they go through the situations where they can be which can be making it difficult I was very interested with this comment by both Alfredo I think he has a great capacity to come closer to the students I must admit that he has a capacity to design because I think there is a lot of creativity in the way we design the lessons of the classes in such a way that for example Antonella was talking about group mentoring in a way they are mentoring each other and they come up, my experience they come up much more prepared to be mentor at the level of the teacher because there are different levels they have been discussing each other and filling up as far as they could go together then they come up with questions and they will be much more open to see further stages of progress and ask the tutor for that but in relation to the question I think that it is a very delicate line and it is only knowing we have a task, we have a of bringing them, developing them as people and particularly in the sense of their capacity to reach what we promise at the level of the university and that is our task and I think that the respect and engagement with them has their two sides of the same line but I can imagine this setting of diverse class and groups very often I have done lots of groups during the classroom but as Santorella says it is a very good moment to find where they are how they go Thank you for this indeed it is a very delicate question, I thank Diana for this question and I think the answer will differ from culture to culture politically correctness is different understood in various cultures and this is a challenge indeed Alfredo would you also like to answer this question about the blending professional and personal approaches Microphone please Alfredo Let me put it this way I try to be less personal as possible I think that because we all have different lives we all have different personalities I am an engineer so I am sorry I want to have this problem solved of the competences etc so I concentrate on that that is my approach but sometimes I was dean of studies and I had to deal with personal situations but during the mentoring I tried to concentrate on the personal not on the personal but on the professional and like Julia said it is a very thin line so my mind is always trying to get away from the personal let me tell you a story I think everyone here started teaching we just applied for being a teacher at university sometimes even without doing the PhD and we started learning without a net and when I started I had a professor and she was very competent as a teacher etc but when we were getting grades and we did it all in a group she always said oh this boy is so kind, so educated we cannot give him that grade and these things are, how do I say mark me a lot because we were giving grades not as a function of the person but a function of the other and it was an approach that some some teachers still have I have old students of mine that when they are teachers they have this personal approach but it's not fair because I know that each one of the students is the first, that's okay but as a teacher when we are evaluating and that's what I talked about we should concentrate on the outputs so that is my recommendation that if I can say just a word it's a way to honor and respect the students first of all and our roles as teachers as you said, especially whether in European or area we are not trained especially to be good assessors and this is an issue actually we should really work on that with the young generations because that is essential and so doing we should also teach our students how to to consider that the more the objective assessment and the better for them for them and for their lives Thank you I think also Julia wanted to jump in if I saw correctly just a very quick comment because I was thinking I'm very happy with both Antonella and Alfredo's comment because I think we have to have a guiding line of where we are and what is her purpose there but no, I just wanted to comment that in terms of this following up the students there is a moment which I think it is particularly relevant which is first year I think that we didn't mention it and I think I wanted to make just a little gap saying that we are doing some research on first year performances and sometimes it's just lack of specific competences on the part of the students or the professors that actually end up with great failures and people who could do very well never get to that because there is a mismatch there in terms of competences like time management and issues that are completely ways of studies, methodology that they jump from a particular system to another and then there I think I feel that we should be more trained particularly the teachers who are in first year more prepared to take these elements which are really how to perform better their time, what to do best the use of the time, the way of approaching things the whole system that they need to somehow sit with them I like your story because it is there that we can lose them and it is a real pity I will be even bolder and say why stop at first years why don't we go to secondary education and start from there we can go that far and we can continue because there is another moment that Antonella was somehow touching which is when they leave university and sort of that kind of how best they can use their training into their professional life so there are moments I think that even though they may be throughout but there are moments in which the mentoring or the following up or the sitting up with them is particularly relevant Thank you I think thank you all for the patience I know we are a little bit late but I saw that there were several questions on the same topic and I would like to have a short answer in a few words from all three of you so the question is related of how can we motivate students now in the digital environment and in the online course how can we make them pay attention and be motivated to see through our courses I don't know what's the case for the few of you but our students we try to beg them to open their camera so we teach dark screens and maybe some of them open their cameras but it's very challenging even if it's interactive and they sometimes start their microphones you don't know exactly what they are doing a very good very short example what would you do best for them to be motivated and in this online environment we start in whichever order you want I can start if you want but just to tell you about my experience I've seen that of course involvement if the first keyword so you need to maybe and actually that's what I did for all this last term give them some materials in advance ask them to work with specific questions on the materials you give and then ask them to present their work during the online meeting but you need to and this is closely connected to assessment because they are motivated and involved and participate if you reward them some way marking their work and keeping that production that mark for their final mark this proved to be actually essential even if it's a small part of the old grade that they will get in the end but they feel really motivated and they really participate and actually I can tell you that during this last term they really were I was impressed actually because with large classes with different groups involved anyway they all wanted to reach the end and to be productive but I want to steal more time Thank you Antonella Julia? I can follow because it follows very closely I was just thinking which are the activities that are more exciting where I get we have got more motivation and participation and it is when you divide it into teams the results and particularly when there are questions which are being asked from a team to another one because otherwise they just present this is our experience and you run the risk that they disappear but if they have another element afterwards of actually having to answer a question that somebody else has presented then they have to listen to what is going on with the other people they are interested in what other people are doing but sometimes it grows more the interest grows highest if there is a further element that they have to ask each other and then they have some kind of being but the other people have said and they have to answer it in a different way and they have a recession period bringing another kind of elements because they are more prepared and jointly engaged I think the word engaged is very clear Thank you Julia Alfredo? My notion after all these years is that if a student doesn't want to learn he will never learn it doesn't matter what we do you can sing, you can do whatever you want he doesn't want to learn he will never learn but let me give you an example that I do with my students it's on construction management the tactics for certain subjects it's a question of role playing some of them are construction owners some others are the construction workers some others are the construction engineers and I put them a problem and they decide what to do with the discussions among them it's interesting because when you give them time to prepare for this discussion they have very good let's say solutions from each one of them so that's what I do it's role playing but with a concrete problem Thank you Alfredo thank you all for very interesting answers and for very good examples I hope and I believe that we managed you managed to inspire our colleagues to be better in mentoring their students and also to do the peer mentoring between each other not only to let the students do that thank you again for all of you for attending and thank you to our three great speakers for accepting to present today and for sharing your experiences Thanks to you really for showing up at the Eden event so please to meet you Julian we hope to see you at other events for Eden as well let me tell you something in person she's much more funnier and interesting than on a virtual well let's hope we can start to meet again face to face Thank you Bye bye safe everyone Bye