The ET-LIOS project, an acronym for «Enseigne­ments Tech­nologiques de niveau LIcence Ouverts pour une indus­trie du futur com­péti­tive et Souten­able» [First Degree lev­el Tech­nol­o­gy-inten­sive train­ing for com­pet­i­tive & sus­tain­able indus­try] is a project of ‘hybridiza­tion’ of high­er edu­ca­tion cours­es ded­i­cat­ed to ‘Indus­try of the Future’.

The ET-LIOS project devel­ops «hybrid» ped­a­gog­i­cal con­tents, designed to be used in engi­neer­ing and indus­tri­al train­ing cours­es, on sub­jects relat­ed to so-called “4.0 tech­nolo­gies”, with a focus on com­pet­i­tive­ness and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The project is car­ried out by an aca­d­e­m­ic group of 14 part­ner uni­ver­si­ties, led by UTC-Com­pieg­ne, a mem­ber of the S.mart sci­en­tif­ic inter­est group and win­ner of the «PIA3 New Uni­ver­si­ty Cours­es» pro­gramme. Fund­ed by the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) under the Gov­ern­ment incen­tive Pro­gramme called “‘Investisse­ments d’Avenir” (PIA), the project was launched in Novem­ber 2020, in con­nec­tion with the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic cri­sis and to meet the need to ensure the ped­a­gog­i­cal con­ti­nu­ity of HE teach­ing. Indeed, the 14 part­ner uni­ver­si­ties of the project pooled their expe­ri­ences acquired dur­ing the COVID-19 peri­od, in terms of dis­tance learn­ing and con­ti­nu­ity of train­ing. They designed and devel­oped var­i­ous hybrid teach­ing mod­ules that also meet the needs of «autonomous learn­ing», «flipped class­room» and oth­er inno­v­a­tive train­ing meth­ods. The project is aimed at learn­ers and teach­ers of SPI, EEA, Pro Licences in the theme, BUT GMP, GEII, GIM, QLIO, MP, SGM, PEC, inte­grat­ed prepara­to­ry cycles of INSA, Poly­tech, UT, and also first year of the engi­neer­ing cycle.

Active pedagogy…

«Active teach­ing is favoured. Remote stu­dents can use these sim­u­la­tion soft­ware pro­grams like a video game, in a fun envi­ron­ment. The tools made avail­able facil­i­tate learn­ing, in par­tic­u­lar the online checks as to the valid­i­ty of the actions under­tak­en by the learn­er. The plat­forms are acces­si­ble, con­trol­lable and remote­ly usable. They make it pos­si­ble to gen­er­ate ‘real data’ to illus­trate all the trades through their main­te­nance aspects,» stress­es Benoit Eynard, teacher-researcher in indus­tri­al engi­neer­ing, Sci­en­tif­ic Man­ag­er of ET-LIOS AIP (Uni Lor­raine). It is based on six teach­ing mod­ules: Design-sim­u­la­tion-3D pro­to­typ­ing, Advanced man­u­fac­tur­ing and metrol­o­gy, E‑maintenance of cyber-phys­i­cal pro­duc­tion sys­tems, Dig­i­tal twin and vir­tu­al com­mis­sion­ing of auto­mat­ed pro­duc­tion sys­tems, Sus­tain­able and respon­si­ble engi­neer­ing and Intel­li­gent sys­tems and mul­ti­phys­i­cal modelling.

… and innovative

The lat­ter, for exam­ple, aims to train future tech­ni­cians and engi­neers to design from the per­spec­tive of inte­grat­ing mechan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal, elec­tron­ic and soft­ware func­tions. In the con­text of the design of con­nect­ed, “smart” and adap­tive sys­tems, the engi­neer inte­grates struc­tur­al, sen­so­ry and motor func­tions linked by intel­li­gence. The design and pro­duc­tion of these com­plex, light and resis­tant com­po­nents, equipped with a form of auton­o­my, capa­ble of car­ry­ing out mea­sure­ments and move­ments or behav­iour­al adap­ta­tions, requires the imple­men­ta­tion of new skills. «After an intro­duc­tion pre­sent­ing the main trends linked to prod­uct devel­op­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the con­text of the devel­op­ment of mecha­tron­ic sys­tems, cyber-phys­i­cal sys­tems and smart prod­ucts, sev­er­al top­ics are addressed, such as sys­tems think­ing, sys­tems engi­neer­ing, require­ments engi­neer­ing, Mod­el Based Sys­tem Engi­neer­ing asso­ci­at­ed with the SysML lan­guage and an aware­ness of the verification/validation log­ic. A case study, based on a land-based “climb­ing” drone for struc­tur­al inspec­tion, serves as an illus­tra­tion through­out the course. The exam­ple of the drone is also used in a recur­rent man­ner in the tuto­ri­als for the appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge and know-how. Class­room time is devot­ed to a project of design, sim­u­la­tion and real­iza­tion up to the phys­i­cal pro­to­typ­ing of a remote­ly con­trol­lable, semi-autonomous device”, explains Matthieu Bricogne, lec­tur­er-cum­re­search sci­en­tist at UTC and respon­si­ble for the mod­ule E. Inno­v­a­tive teach­ing meth­ods such as peer-to-peer mod­el reviews were also devised and asso­ci­at­ed dig­i­tal solu­tions were devel­oped in part­ner­ship with the uni­ver­si­ty research group of the Jean-François Cham­pol­lion institution.

For a sustainable society

The Sus­tain­able and Respon­si­ble Engi­neer­ing mod­ule aims at pro­vid­ing open-source teach­ing mate­ri­als and to train high­er edu­ca­tion teach­ers so that they can inte­grate socio-eco­log­i­cal issues into their teach­ing. «Whether we are talk­ing about eco­log­i­cal tran­si­tion, ener­gy-cli­mate issues or sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, the chal­lenge is the same, name­ly the trans­for­ma­tion of our Soci­ety and econ­o­my into resilient sys­tems. Inte­grat­ing socio-eco­log­i­cal issues into our train­ing, our pro­fes­sions and our lives means recog­nis­ing the need for change. The engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sion wears two hats. They are both the source of the envi­ron­men­tal prob­lem through their involve­ment in the use of resources and ener­gy and the pro­duc­tion of waste, but they are also the ones best placed to find solu­tions for these prob­lems. The engi­neer there­fore plays a piv­otal role between tech­nol­o­gy and soci­ety,» explains Tatiana Reyes- Car­il­lo, a lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist at UTT­Troyes (the Uni­ver­sité de Tech­nolo­gie de Troyes) and head of mod­ule F. The aim of the Sus­tain­able and Respon­si­ble Engi­neer­ing mod­ule is to ques­tion and repo­si­tion the engi­neer of tomor­row with­in our Society.

Providing knowledge to lecturerscum- research scientists to feed their thinking

Col­lab­o­ra­tion with dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions and the involve­ment of lec­tur­ers from the tar­get­ed cours­es (BUT, bachelor’s degrees) encour­age the homogeni­sa­tion of train­ing mod­ules as well as the tools to be devel­oped and shared. «Of course, we must not for­get the tech­ni­cal and ped­a­gog­i­cal sup­port for the project, based as it is on a triple chal­lenge: 1° build­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive tool with sev­er­al con­trib­u­tors: 2° struc­tur­ing of the con­tents, their for­mat­ting and 3° ensur­ing the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the resources. We work at the UTC in edi­to­r­i­al chains devel­oped inter­nal­ly to man­age these three dimen­sions,» empha­sis­es Manuel Maja­da, head of the UTC’s ped­a­gog­i­cal sup­port unit. The results: a real added val­ue for doc­u­ments that are more struc­tured, more com­plete, more com­fort­able and more inter­ac­tive for the stu­dents. What comes next? To con­tin­ue to work around the com­mu­ni­ties cre­at­ed for the pro­duc­tion of even more eas­i­ly reused doc­u­ments and to con­tin­ue the reflec­tion on attrac­tive usage scenarios.

FOUR SUB-PROJECTS IN SUPPORT OF PEDAGOGICAL HYBRIDISATION

• Devel­op­ment of the dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture for “vir­tu­al­is­ing” soft­ware solu­tions and host­ing edu­ca­tion­al content.
• Struc­tur­ing, devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of edu­ca­tion­al content.
• Mea­sur­ing the project’s per­for­mance and impact on the tar­get train­ing courses.
• Dis­sem­i­na­tion and avail­abil­i­ty of edu­ca­tion­al content. 

OBJECTIVES AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES OFFERED BY THE ET-LIOS PROJECT

• To devel­op new sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal teach­ing con­tents, by encour­ag­ing the auton­o­my of learners.
• To exper­i­ment these con­tents with teach­ers and learn­ers at under­grad­u­ate level.
• To make this shared edu­ca­tion­al con­tent, made vail­able to S.mart mem­bers and, more broad­ly, to aca­d­e­m­ic actors at the nation­al level.
• To devel­op plat­forms and resources com­pat­i­ble with the hybridi­s­a­tion of teach­ing and oth­er forms of inno­v­a­tive teach­ing, and to make them avail­able to the edu­ca­tion­al community.
•  Mea­sure the per­for­mance of the project and the impact on the tar­get cours­es, with stu­dents and teachers.

3 QUESTIONS TO…

Maxime Blam­pain, 21 years old, who stud­ied for his bachelor’s degree at UTT, major­ing in Design & Mate­r­i­al Shap­ing Process­es last year and is cur­rent­ly doing a Master’s degree in Dig­i­tal mechan­ics and design at INSSET, Saint-Quentin.

How did the ET-LIOS project con­tribute to your per­son­al learning?

I was a stu­dent assis­tant engi­neer at the UTC with­in the ET-LIOS project and my role was to take part in the cre­ation of con­tents and to bring my stu­dent vision to the var­i­ous pro­posed con­tents, to ensure that the cours­es and state­ments were clear. This train­ing allowed me to devel­op my knowl­edge, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the field of mate­ri­als. This work-study peri­od with­in the ET-LIOS project has giv­en me a lot of knowl­edge on the IT aspect, as I come from a back­ground that is more focused on mechan­i­cal design. These two fields are com­ple­men­tary in my opinion.

How did you expe­ri­ence this peri­od of online remote learning?

This peri­od was quite com­pli­cat­ed I must say. Stay­ing behind a screen with head­phones on so as not to dis­turb the rest of the house was not pleas­ant. Inter­ac­tion with col­leagues and teach­ers was com­pli­cat­ed. The prac­ti­cal class­es were dif­fi­cult to fol­low as we did not have the machines at our dis­pos­al and read­ing dozens of pages of PDFs on how to use the machines was a ‘pain in the neck’. So hybridi­s­a­tion of cours­es is a good for­mu­la when the sup­port is well­struc­tured and the con­tents are adapt­ed. Yes, it’s a good for­mu­la when you can’t come on site, which is the case today with the fuel short­age, refin­ery strikes, etc.

What are the virtues of this teach­ing method?

The pos­i­tive aspects of this for­mu­la are obvi­ous­ly: a bet­ter flex­i­bil­i­ty of work, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of man­ag­ing per­son­al prob­lems and unfore­seen events while con­tin­u­ing to work. For exam­ple, the car won’t start so I have to stay at home, but I can give an on-line course by video. Since the begin­ning of this year, I’m deliv­er­ing a work-study pro­gramme at Cetim in Sen­lis and my pro­fes­sion­al project is to evolve with­in a design office in the field of motor sports or aeronautics.