ICo -op Industrial Cooperation and Creative Engineering Education Based on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation-status report October 2014

Before the report, a monitoring visits by Franz Thomas Steidele, from European Commission - Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) were done on 7 October, 2013 at the Ilia State University – Tbilisi, Georgia, on 6 November, 2013 at the American University of Armenia Foundation – Yerevan, Armenia, and on 27 November, 2013 at the National Technical University "Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute" – Kharkiv, Ukraine. Some of the recommendations done to the partners as a result of the visits were as follows:

• The Georgian partners were recommended to speed up the process of equipment purchase.
• Armenian partners were recommended to reinforce the role of University-Enterprise Executive Boards at their universities and to liaise more with other on-going Tempus projects  in the field of university-enterprise cooperation to avoid synergy and to promote knowledge transfer.
• Ukrainian universities were recommended to review the Guidelines developed to make it more practical and in line with Bologna instruments, as well as  to speed up the process of equipment purchase, which requires official registration of  the project in Ukraine.

The observations done during the monitoring visits and the intermediate report served as a basis for assessment of the project by EACEA, which was positive.

The third meeting was hosted by Tbilisi ISU University from March 24 to March 25, 2014. During the two-day meeting sessions activities since Kharkov meeting were discussed and the ongoing situation was analyzed. Also, discussion of the actual status of the learning Modules and the next meeting details were discussed. Working groups discussed remote lab specific issues and the general content of the modules to be prepared by the partners.

The fourth meeting was hosted by the American University of Armenia from August 25 to August 26, 2014. At the meeting sessions EACEA feedback to Midterm Report was discussed. Among other topics of discussion were the actual status of the learning modules, translation of modules and manuals and their access. Tasks for the 2nd half of year 2014 and project mobility (status and plans for 2014) were analyzed.

Training meetings are the important component of the ICo-op project. They are context sensitive and intend to provide the partners with answers to the questions that are demanded at the particular stage of the project. Two training meetings were organized during the period after the Kharkiv meeting.

• “IMPROVING QUALITY IN LEARNING SERVICES USING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS’’ training took place December 9 to 11, 2013, in Yerevan State Engineering University. The training program was conducted by Anni Koubek from Quality Austria and included discussion about management systems in higher education, international standards for them, overview on key-concepts of quality control in management systems. The lecturing sessions were combined with practice exercises.
• ICo-op Training was held on June 16th - 20th, 2014, in Ilmenau, at Technische Universitat Ilmenau. Presentations by the industrial partners as well as presentations of Learning Modules by Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia partners were done. Demonstrations of GOLDI, NI Lab and WebLab Deusto in the teaching process were presented.
• ICo-op was given a nice opportunity to be presented in the 11^th International Conference on Remote Engineering and Virtual Instrumentation (REV)  that took place on February 26 – 28, 2014 and was hosted by the School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto - Portugal. The main objective of this conference was to demonstrate and discuss fundamentals, applications and experiences in the field of remote engineering and virtual instrumentation. There was a special session devoted to Tempus projects that have relation with remote engineering and virtual instrumentation. Karsten Henke (TU Ilmenau) and Andreas Pester (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences) presented on the ICo-op in the conference. Besides, articles and presentations prepared by the partners from Ilmenau University of Technology, Zaporizhzhya National Technical University, Shota Rustaveli State University, American University of Armenia, and Kapan Branch of State Engineering University of Armenia were presented by the project partners in different sessions of the conference.
• In May 25, 2014, Tempus and Erasmus+ participated in annual Europe day Information Week, where along with other Tempus and Erasmus+ projects currently underway in Armenia, iCo-op was also presented by AUA.