EDUCON and EDUNINE Best Paper Awards

Among the various objectives and tasks underlying the mission defined for the IEEE Education Society, knowledge sharing, and the support in advancing it, play a fundamental role. In pursuit of such objectives, conferences and similar events are one of the most important paths. The development of networks, the encouragement of a sense of community, the creation of opportunities, and the recognition of merit stand out among the many virtues identified in such events.

The Education Society’s most notable contribution in this area is the support of five leading conferences, spread across all regions of the world: Frontiers in Education (FIE), IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), IEEE World Conference on Engineering Education (EDUNINE), International Conference on Engineering, Technology and Education (TALE), with more general themes, and Learning with MOOCS (LWMOCS), with more specific themes. In addition, the Education Society supports more than a dozen conferences through Technical Co-Sponsorship, seeking to complement the themes included in the main conferences/regions.

As we all know, this has been an atypical year. Forcing all events to go online has created a lot of challenges and apprehensions regarding their effectiveness, but it has also created some very exciting opportunities. Fortunately for us, the community’s response has been very positive, even exceeding, in some cases, the best expectations and, above all, we’ve managed to maintain the same quality and dignity in our events, even though we are losing some of the socializing component, which everyone greatly misses. At this point in the year, EDUNINE and EDUCON have already finished and their proceedings have been published, and FIE and LWMOOCS are in the final stages of finalizing the programs, while TALE is still in the process of reviewing articles.

As we constantly seek to increase the recognition of the main contributions made within the science of engineering education, all of our conferences have a policy of awarding the best papers. The criteria are the rigor and innovation of the methods used, the value and perception of knowledge created, and the general contribution to the education area. To further promote this recognition, we have listed the selected papers and the authors for the two events that have already occurred below:

2020 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Porto, Portugal - Best Paper by Award Category:

Most innovative paper, to
K. N. Kirschner, S. Keil, K. Seuser and C. Siefer, "Teaching Technical Journalism with an Engineering Foundation".

Student paper, to
H. C. de Resende, N. Slamnik-Krijestorac, C. B. Both and J. Marquez-Barja, “Introducing Engineering Undergraduate Students to Network Management Techniques: A Hands-on approach using the Citylab Smart City”.

Infrastructure and technologies for engineering education, to
G. Ciordas-Hertel, J. Schneider and H. Drachsler, “Which Strategies are Used in the Design of Technical LA Infrastructure? A Qualitative Interview Study”.

Innovation, methods, teaching, and learning experiences in engineering education, to
G. M. Lundberg, B. R. Krogstie, and J. Krogstie, “Becoming Fully Operational: Employability and the Need for Training of Computer Science Graduates”.

Attracting, engaging, and retaining human talent to engineering, to
V. Thurner, S. Hammer, S. Ottinger, and M. Waldleitner, “Development and Evaluation of an Assessment Tool for Self-Reflection”.

Serious games, game-based learning, and gamification for engineering education, to
M. Venter, “Gamification in STEM programming courses: State of the art”.

Virtual and remote labs (V&RL) in engineering education, to
T. G. Giese, M. Wende, S. Bulut and R. Anderl, “Introduction of Data Literacy in the Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum”.

2020 IEEE World Conference on Engineering Education (EDUNINE), Bogota, Colombia - Best Paper by Award Category:

Innovation in teaching & learning of the common core curriculum, to
I. O. Yahuarcani et al., “Effects of the use of the BAKE mobile application as an Educative instrument for teaching content for preschool education to Shipibo people in the community of Cantagallo, Lima, Peru”.
and to
J. R. Portillo and A. E. Alvarado, “Calculus and Engineering: reinforcing their link with Transparent Assignments”.

Redesigning learning spaces, to
R. R. Calderón et al., “Low cost platform to implement IoT prototypes”.
and to
T. Luna-MarÍn et al., “An intelligent ecosystem based on robotic assistants, rule-based reasoning and serious games to support early stimulation activities for children from low-income families”.

Innovation in academic management & organization, to
P. Horiuchi and J. Sotomayor, “Methodology to Measure Student Outcomes for ABET Accreditation: Case Study of an Electronic Engineering Program in Peru”.

There are other important sources of information about those conferences, but it is worth mentioning some recent newsletters promoted within the LWMOOCS scope. There is one discussing the impact of MOOCS in the so-called 4th industrial revolution (a version in English and a version in Spanish), together with another one focused on the LWMOOCS 2020, this year promoting a discussion concerning the role of MOOCS in the industrial sector, under a transformation process and a pandemic environment.

Henrique Santos
IEEE Education Society Vice President of Conferences and Workshops