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Ladies and Gentlemen, colleagues, representatives of business, dear students,
dear Dr. Köster from the ministery of sience of our land. In my capacity as the Rector of the FH Bochum, University of applied sciences Bochum, I am pleased to be able to bid you a heartly welcome to Bochum for the first International Workshop on Education in Mechatronics here in the Technology Centre. I am glad that so many of you accepted the invitation to this conference especially those of you who have travelling a long distance. This tells me that the organizers have choosen the topic. Our Patron of this conference, the minister for science and research, Mrs. Behler, has already explained that mechatronics is a relatively young discipline. It is therefore quite natural that as far as teaching, research and transfer are concerned those working in the field use numerous and various approaches, have had different experiences and have many open questions; and that for this reason they want to meet to exchange ideas with their colleagues. Our meeting today and tomorrow, you will give us all an opportunity to exchange international ideas of teaching and also a critical reflection so that you can gain new impulses for permanent improvement on your course discussions. The foreign visitors to our conference will also have the opportunity to become acquainted with German activities in the field of mechatronics in industry and research. For a moment let me say a few words of thanks. Conference organisation is skilled and time consumming. Our thanks are am to the organizers: my colleagues in the rector's office, Professor Dudziak, Professor Roddeck of the department of mechanical engineering. Mr. Dohms, the director of our unit for communication, innovation and transfer as well as all members of staff who have contributed or will contribute to the success of this conference. Ladies and Gentlemen, In the spring of 1994, as one of the first institutions of post-secondary education in Germany, the University of Applied Sciences Bochum established its own eight-semester course of studies in mechatronics with an integrated work semester. At a ceremony in December 1997, we took leave of the first engineers to graduate in mechatronics and to proceed to their professional carreers. This was the first time that graduates in engineering came on the job market with an interdisciplinary training giving them not only profound knowledge of mechanical and electrical engineering and information science, but more importantly networked knowledge of these fields. In cooperation with the businesses in the region, we have been able in just two years to plan an innovative course of studies to train engineers of the type demanded by many branches of the economy. In 1994 when the course of studies was approved , the minister of science stated: "Among the engineering sciences, mechatronics is the course of the future." Many other institutions of post-secondary education in Germany share this opinion, and also offer a course of studies in "mechatronics". We shall shortly divide our basic course of studies into the specialities automotive industry, medical technology and mechanical engineering. In 1995, together with the Chamber of Industry and Trade for the central Ruhr area and the District Association of Tradesmen in Bochum and Herne, we developed a new model for professional training for academic-stream school graduates and school graduates with admission qualification for professional colleges which links training in a trade with post-secondary studies; we call it Cooperative Engineering Training in Mechatronics. During the accelerated two-year period of in-plant vocational training in an industrial plant as an industrial machinist specialising in machine and systems technology or in a skilled trades plant as a metalworker, the school graduates can already begin their first-year courses on two days a week. The students of the Cooperative Engineering Training programme become acquainted with the plant working environment and receive engineering training which is oriented on specific problems encountered in practical work. After a total of four and a half years, they can leave the college with an academic diploma and a skilled worker's certificate. This often enables students from academic-stream schools to compensate for the lack of practical experience. A situation wich is not unknown in the industry. In addition to the interdisciplinary and work-integrated character of the mechatronics programme, its international character is of significance in this era of increasing globalisation. For this reason, my university established a joint German-French programme of studies "Mechatronics, Commande des Systèmes" in the winter semester 1996-97 together with our partner, the Université Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, in France. German students of mechatronics attend the IUP (Institut Universitaire Professionalisé) in Clermont-Ferrand for one year in their third of four years. In the first half year, they attend third-year courses in the programme "Commande des Systèmes", and in the second half year they do a five-month work-term with a French company. The students thus become acquainted in practice with how their colleagues, fellow students and employers in France work. On successful completion of this course of studies, the students receive the degrees "Diplom-Ingenieur" from the University of Applied Sciences Bochum and the "Maîtrise" from the University Blaise Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. These two degrees are generally recognised and considerably improve individual job prospects in Europe. In addition to these courses of studies, we also have a research programme "microsystems technology and mechatronics" at the University of Applied Sciences Bochum involving five instructors. We are also involved in the research federation "Transmechatronics" consisting of the University of Paderborn and the University of Applied Sciences Aachen , Bielefeld, Cologne, Iserlohn, Münster and Krefeld and sponsored by the Land Northrhine-Westphalia, and are represented in the federation by Professor Dudziak. The goal of the transmechatronics federation is to stimulate and promote product innovations in integrated mechanical engineering, and to transfer new methods and instruments for the development of mechatronics systems via the Universities college to small and medium-sized enterprises. Mechanical engineering in Northrhine-Westphalia is characterised by small and medium-sized enterprises, and is an important branch of industry here. In order to secure employment in and to ensure the long-term competitiveness of this sector, product innovations involving a cooperative effort in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, control engineering and software are imperative. Small and medium-sized enterprises need impulses from University of Applied Sciences institutions of post-secondary education, particularly from professional colleges; in dealing with concrete projects. Universities of applied sciences have often demonstrated that their methodological and instrumental competence yields very good results by increasing the innovative potential of enterprises and by producing output efficiently. Within this federation, we are establishing an "innovations centre mechatronics" at the FH Bochum with the goal of positioning our college as the centre for training in mechatronics in Northrhine-Westphalia. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have so far briefly depicted our various activities in the field of mechatronics in order to indicate that in the last few years at the University of Applied Sciences Bochum we have considerable had a good amount of experience and that the representatives of the subject from my university will be able to make quite a contribution to the discussions that will take place at this conference. I have also depicted our activities in the field of mechatronics in order to demonstrate that at my university we have been carefully observing the changes on the job market and that we are energetically reacting to the changing demands business makes on our graduates with new, pioneering training concepts. But let me speak now as an expert for personnel development: our aim is not to react to changing demand on the job market in smaller and smaller cycles by generating slight modifications of courses of studies, course titles and modern-sounding degrees. I would like to say in more detail what the point is as far as I am concerned. And to make a working contribution of my own at the beginning of this conference. Economic developments in the past years have resulted in a lasting change in the personnel structure of businesses. Increasing market centralisation, application of new information technologies and the very dynamic environment of business policy have considerably changed functions and work procedures. This process will continue. In many branches of the economy, employee's skills are occupied less and less with routine work and increasingly taken up with complex tasks. The result of this development is a distinct shift of the structure of employees' qualifications through all branches of the economy. This also holds for the engineering profession. Business has long been demanding, as a recent article in the daily newspaper "Berliner Morgenpost" put it, a "marketing-oriented development engineer". Demand for technology freaks, fiddlers and do-it-yourselfers is receding. Today and in the future, the market success of an enterprise is dependent on whether it is possible to recruit and develop employees who are competent in their field, who identify themselves with the business goals of their enterprises and who are quick to find creative solutions for the customers' complex problems. The personnel capacity limits or opens the latitude of success, it is of decisive significance as the intrinsic company value. The requirements for all working people have become more extensive and more demanding. This is particularly true of people who work in academic professions. The modern engineer has to be able to rely on profound, state-of-the-art interdisciplinary knowledge. This applies equally to the highly qualified specialist in management or development departments or in innovative business fields and to the generalist in marketing or working on customer counselling, from whom the customer expects uncomplicated service. What is expected in view of an increasing customer orientation is, in addition to sound knowledge, qualities which have become familiar by the names methodological and social competence.One aspect of methodological competence is, for example, the ability to solve problems systematically. In the past, the superiority of engineers was based largely on the fact that by dealing with hundreds of technical problems in years of professional practice they had developed an understanding of the most complex problems. But nowadays, even young graduates in engineering can act as competently with the help of "intelligent" computer-aided systems. Professional experience, feeling and intuition will certainly continue to be of significance, but systematic analysis to prepare the ground for a practical decision is gaining ground. Social competence towards outsiders includes qualities such as communicative skill, empathy and flexibility in order to come to terms with the clients individual needs. Within the enterprise, social competence manifests itself primarily in cooperativeness and teamability. The demands made on management have also increased. New technologies at the workplace are increasingly disintegrating hierarchically oriented forms of work and lead to team work. Since the use of electronic data processing has become normal at the workplace, whether in the form of personal computers or of terminal systems connected to mainframe computers, employees are able to gain information independently of management. They are able to plan more quickly and with more autonomy, and to make decisions with more assurance. Management is therefore less and less in a position to lead on the basis of superior information. Supervision and control cannot be practised in the old familiar form. Instead of giving orders and supervising, management must be able to conduct creative and systematic discussions with employees in order to promote the search for joint solutions. They are called upon to reconsider and relearn if they want to continue to cope with their leadership role under the changed conditions. Qualified employees must receive cooperative leadership. Complex technical problems and specialised activities require a strengthening of integration potential and coordination ability. What we have to keep in mind is that the changes in the economy have led to new demands which have the common denominator: It is not just the engineer's knowledge that is required, the engineer's personality is also in demand. Experience shows that profound changes cause anxiety in many people, they lead to a feeling of insecurity and being overtaxed. This applies for employees in business, but also for students and instructors at our institutions of post-secondary education. Because of these changes, institutions of post-secondary education, particularly the Universities of Applied Scienes, which are more strongly practice oriented, face considerable challenges regarding their future educational policy and practice. The first goal in curriculum and in methods must be to respond to the changes brought about by the shift in economic structure so as to prepare students in all programmes of studies for these structures and to qualify them for autonomous control of permanent change processes. This for its part means that the materials taught and the forms of training must be radically reformed and reconfigured. A single department cannot perform this herculian task, much less can individual professors do it. At the University of Applied Sciences Bochum we have established a special central academic service unit responsible for these problems. The institute for future-oriented competence development. This institute will support the academic departments in planning and teaching for the development of a programme of studies leading to the key qualifications mentioned above. This institute will also set signals on two further important fields of economic and educational policy in Northrhine-Westphalia:
This idea can be understood in more concrete terms when the individual activities involved are briefly defined or described. Field of entrepreneurship: Our basic principle here is: identify, motivate, qualify. In their first semester, our students already have the opportunity to participate in an entrepreneurial assessment and, so to speak, receive an appraisal of whether or not they have the potential to go into independent business. In the course of the programme of studies, there are numerous offerings for those who show entrepreneurial potential and who would like to set up their own enterprises to prepare them for the path of independent business. Let me just cite a few key words:
Field of key qualifications: The point here is to put this vague and overused expression in more concrete terms and to integrate it in the course of training. Here, too, I will only cite a few key words to indicate what the point is: The point of instruction in methodological competence is to enable the individual
The point of instruction in social and communicative competence is to prepare the students for the sort of dialogue encountered at the workplace, to qualify them for effective and efficient team and project management and to equip them with the skills required for professional sales or presentation. Nowadays, knowledge of foreign languages is naturally among the key qualifications. But it is often not enough to have a command of a foreign language. In China, for example, English is the language of business. But someone who is not acquainted Chinese culture and customs will have difficulty doing business. For this reason, the institute will not only organize language training, but also develop intercultural sensibility by offering additional instruction in cultural specifics. Moreover, we intend to intensify the practical aspect of all programmes by including more project work, promoting diploma theses written on the job in companies and special trainee programmes. Cooperation with businesses in the region is being expanded and intensified. Ladies and Gentlemen, this can only work out if all post-secondary instructors and all members of staff in teaching and research are involved in this process of fundamental reform. But how is that possible if, because of their own specialised training, most of them have had no contact or only peripheral contact with the overarching topics mentioned? Therefore, a third important activity of the new institute for future-oriented competence development is postsecondary teaching methods. The institute will help all colleagues professionalize their teaching by
The departments receive permanent support in the development of new curricula by means of educational consulting. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have portrayed our complex reform approaches only a little, but to make it clear that an institution of post-secondary education cannot come to terms with the challenges presented by the profound changes in the economy and in society simply by establishing one or the other new programme of studies such as mechatronics. The Universities of Applied Sciences put clear and predominant emphasis on practice-oriented instruction in conjunction with applicable research and development, and in my opinion they are therefore particularly called upon to undertake fundamental interdisciplinary reform measures. It is undeniable that in the past years the Universities of Applied Sciences of the Land have reacted quickly and flexibly to scientific and technological developments as well as to changes in the professions for which they offer training. They have revised and modernised the curricula of existing programmes of studies and developed new programmes. Throughout the Land Northrhine-Westphalia, about 70 programmes of studies and 60 specialisations have been established since 1985. By way of illustration, let me cite in addition to mechatronics micro-systems technology, product development, conjoint engineering and commerce, information sciences for media, medical and health technology, medical information sciences, sector-oriented specialisations in economics such as business economics for commerce, and numerous international programmes of study. However, these new offerings were for the most part specialist responses to a global employment situation which is becoming increasingly differentiated with increasing division of labour. In accordance with the principle of action orientation, the goal now is to reform the courses of studies and the curricula in such a manner that at the end of a programme the students do not just have more knowledge than at the beginning, but are also able to out. In the case of the engineering sciences, this means that it is high time to end the overemphasis on factual knowledge at the expense of interdisciplinary knowledge of methods. According to the automation technologist Professor Massberg from the Ruhr-University Bochum, two questions are central:
Mechtronics is an excellent example of despecialisation as much as it integrates fields which used to be separate: electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and information sciences. However, the integration of interdisciplinary contents in engineering programmes has in my opinion not yet been very successful. If the Association of German Engineers had its way, engineering programmes would have a four part structure in the future: Thirty percent of the teaching material deals with the mathematical and scientific foundations, thirty percent with the technical foundations, twenty percent are devoted to an exemplary specialisation in a field of application and the remaining twenty percent are for non-technical subject matter. Let me quote from an association memorandum on this topic: "The goal must be to impart to the future engineers the qualification for creative problem solutions, for cooperative social behaviour with leadership competence and communicative competence, and for taking a holistic view of a technical project in its environment." At most post-secondary institutions in the land, the Association's demand that twenty percent of course contents should be of an interdisciplinary nature or involve personality development has met with little approval. The universities in particular fear that the traditionally high standard of engineering training will be endangered if non-technical elements are given more room. Let me tell these doubters that it is indeed possible to combine the one element with the other, and that the result need not to be a loss of quality. The University of Applied Sciences for Technology and Design in Mannheim, for example, has managed to establish such an approach together with the companies ABB and the Freudenberg group: project-oriented diploma theses which are written by a team of students. The best case is when the team members come from different departments so that different points of view will bear on the discussion. Key qualifications such as team orientation, communicative skill or systematic thinking cannot be imparted by a seminar or a lecture. Students will only acquire these qualifications if they repeatedly practise them in concrete projects. The academic reform commission of Northrhine-Westphalia has the same view of the matter, suggesting that in the advanced portion of the programmes of studies, the major part of the teaching material should be imparted by means of practicelinked and team-oriented projects. In the face of all the objections that may be raised against learning in teams, against practicelinked projects and against cooperation with other disciplines at the institution, I would again like to strongly point out that the economy has no further demand for individual competitors. Post-secondary institutions must train engineers to be sensitive to peripheral areas that impinge on their topic, who have a knowledge of economics and keep an eye on ecological questions by examining the entire life cycle of products from development to recycling. Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the goals of this conference directly touches upon the topic that was central to my remarks: "Development of competence as a demand made by industry on the mechatronics programme." I very much hope that I´ve been able to stimulate your observations. I trust that you will all enjoy interesting and stimulating lectures and discussions at the rest of the conference today and tomorrow. Thank you very much. |