A project-based international collaboration in engineering education

This manuscript describes a project-based international collaboration in engineering education. The collaborators include Penn State University, Altoona College, USA; IUT Bethune, France; Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland; Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw; Cluj Napoca University, Romania; and Kando Kalman Faculty, Hungary. The collaboration emphasizes a team-based engineering design project to be completed by undergraduate engineering/ engineering technology students at the above mentioned universities. What is innovative about this international academic collaboration is that although the student teams in the above mentioned educational institutions work on a common engineering design project, each participating institution is responsible for designing a specific subsystem of the entire engineering system. Therefore, the student teams in USA are responsible for designing and implementing a subsystem different from the teams in France. Eventually, all the subsystems are integrated into a single functional engineering system. Throughout the duration of this project, student teams in USA, France, Ireland, Poland, Hungary, and Romania are expected to communicate with each other through e-mail and web. This manuscript describes the above mentioned on-going international academic collaboration and provides details regarding the implementation of this collaborative project.