Creating an international network of innovative educational labs in mining engineering

Paper i proceeding, 2019

This paper describes the motivation and procedure for the creation of an international network of Innovative Educational Labsin Mining Engineering. The network is primarily designed for university lecturers in mining engineering to foster a broader exchange and stimulate discussion on best practices for innovative educational lab environments. The objective is to contribute to continuous development and improvement in mining engineering education by encouraging stronger international networking, exchange, and discussion among lecturers in mining engineering education. Mining engineering, just like the mining industry,is a comparatively broad, complex and interdisciplinary as well as international field of study. In addition, mines are enormous plants which are hard to grasp and often exist out of sight of young engineers. Therefore, labs and authentic learning environments already are playing a key role in mining engineering education. In addition, due to the distinctively international nature of the mining industry, there already exists a strong network, especially among professors, in the mining engineering discipline. Both of these factors can provide valuable insights for other engineering disciplines. At the same time, the mining engineering discipline itself needs to remain contemporary and competitive, constantly developing and adapting to changing industry requirements and the international network aims to contribute to and support this continuous improvement process. The creation of this network of Innovative Educational labs in Mining Engineering is part of an ongoing project titled“CDIO II –Implementing CDIO in Raw Materials Sector”, funded by EIT Raw Materials (2018/2019). The objective of the project is to apply CDIO elements to the raw materials sector in order to drive continuous development in and contribute to a sustainable future for education in the field of Raw Materials. The vision is to create an interactive online platform to visualize this network and to make it accessible for lecturers around the world, there by contributing to stimulating a dialogue between universities about good practice in mining engineering labs