- South West College (lead partner)
- TKNIKA (Spain)
- Thomas More University (Belgium)
- Institute of Innovation & Knowledge Exchange (UK)
- Dublin City University (Ireland)
The Creative Engine project emerged from a need to enable engineering vocational education and training (VET) learners and staff with practical creativity & innovation skills. It will create an open source learning platform enabling the fundamentals of creativity and innovation to be embedded in the engineering curriculum.
Background
- A disconnect between creativity, innovation & engineering has been recognised.
- Engineering VET has become “over-specialised”, focusing excessively on the body of technical knowledge, with little or no room in the curriculum for developing the ability to think and act creatively & innovatively
- Creative Engine will introduce both VET learners and trainers to the fundamentals of creativity and innovation through “learning-by-doing” and “flipped classroom” approaches.
- This will bridge the gap between the worlds of education and work, enabling students with the skills required to fit the labour market need.
- It will also further enable VET trainers to effectively deliver specialised engineering curriculum through cross-disciplinary and student-centric approaches by development of a teacher training programme.
Objectives
- To undertake a comparative needs analysis across 4 EU countries to map the creativity and innovation skills required in today’s modern engineering industry and influence the design and content of the Creative Engine modular training course.
- To enhance the labour market relevance of engineering VET by designing an openly accessible modular training course in creativity and innovation with a view to making students better learners in their area of expertise and leaders in their future careers.
- To initially strengthen the key competences of 150 learners through the pilot delivery of the Creative Engine modular training course within the partner institutions
- To develop and pilot a teacher training programme to 60 teachers & trainers to enable the effective delivery of specialised cross-disciplinary engineering VET.
- To introduce modern training delivery methods (interactive case studies, podcasts, project-based learning exercises) & open access pedagogical resources (e.g. online toolkit) for staff and learners across Europe building capacity in the engineering sector.
Outputs
- O1: Creative Engine Learning Outcomes & Learning Units
- O2: Creative Engine Curricula & Course Materials
- O3: Creativity & Innovation Teacher Training Programme
- O4: Creative Engine Online Toolkit
- A demonstration workshop in the UK to promote Creative Engine results and validate all learning materials (E2)
- Three national information days in Ireland, Belgium and Spain to share and disseminate Creative Engine results (E1, 3 & 4)
For more information please contact:
Julie Anderson, South West College, Burn Road, Cookstown, County Tyrone, BT80 8DN | Tel: 0044 28 82255223 Email: Julie.anderson@swc.ac.uk