E-learning - an approach to teaching art history in the Internet age

Der erste Universitätskurs in Norwegen, der komplett via Internet unterrichtet wird, wird in Kunstgeschichte angeboten. Dieses Projekt wurde im März 2000 mit einem Einführungskurs in die Kunstgeschichte gestartet. Aufgrund seiner modularen Struktur, visuell ansprechender Präsentationen, fachbezogener Ansätze sowie Möglichkeiten eines zweiseitigen Kommunikationsaustausches, kann das Interesse und der Einbezug der Studenten während der zweijährigen Dauer des Kurses aufrecht erhalten werden.

The Absence of Atrocity: On Bart Michiels’ "The Course of History" Photographs

This article examines the absence of atrocity in the photographic series The Course of History by the Belgian-born, New York-based photographer Bart Michiels (1964–). It shows, in beautiful, large-format prints, seemingly innocent landscapes and confined views of nature. Only when viewers read the titles of the photographs do they become aware of the violent history of the sites. These turn out to be the fields of fierce European battles such as Verdun, Waterloo and Stalingrad. The present article reviews recent trends towards using place as a motif in contemporary art photography and focuses on the ‘empty’ landscape as a pictorial strategy that opens up a narrative space, one that needs to be completed by the viewer. The absence evoked by the image is treated as antithetical to the conventional ethos of photography, which canonically stands as the evidence of an occurrence.

An Activity Theoretical Approach to Designing Curriculum and Instruction That Shift the Means and Ends of History Education

Reformers want history education to help students learn to engage in historical inquiry, read critically across conflicting sources, and engage in civil discussion of controversial issues. How can we help teachers and students shift the roles, norms, and activity in history classrooms to achieve these aims? An activity-theoretical framework suggests the value of explicitly attending to multiple aspects of human activity when designing and presenting reform-oriented pedagogies or curricula. Such attention increases the odds that teachers who implement new approaches or curriculum will achieve significant shifts in the means and ends of history education.

The introduction of teaching innovations into the traditional teaching of construction and building materials

The traditional teaching methods used for training civil engineers are currently being called into question as a result of the new knowledge and skills now required by the labor market. In addition, the European Higher Education Area is requesting that students be given a greater say in their learning. In the subject called Construction and Building Materials at the Civil Engineering School of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, a path was set three academic years ago to lead to an improvement in traditional teaching by introducing active methodologies. The innovations are based on cooperative learning, new technologies, and continuous assessment. The writers’ proposal is to offer their experience as a contribution to the debate on how students can be encouraged to acquire the skills currently demanded from a civil engineer, though not overlooking solid, top-quality training. From the outcomes obtained, it can be concluded that using new teaching techniques to supplement a traditional approach provides more opportunities for students to learn while boosting their motivation. In our case, the introduction of these changes has resulted in an increased pass rate of 29% on average, when such a figure is considered in the light of the mean value of passes during the last decade.

Using Virtual Reality in the teaching of manufacturing processes with material removal in CNC Machine-Tools

This paper presents a methodology for the incorporation of a Virtual Reality development applied to the teaching of manufacturing processes, namely the group of machining processes in numerical control of machine tools. The paper shows how it is possible to supplement the teaching practice through virtual machine-tools whose operation is similar to the 'real' machines while eliminating the risks of use for both users and the machines.

Online games for the teaching of mathematics

In this article we present a didactic experience developed by the GIE (Group of Educational Innovation) “Pensamiento Matemático” of the Polytechnics University of Madrid (UPM), in order to bring secondary students and university students closer to Mathematics. It deals with the development of a virtual board game called Mate-trivial. The mechanics of the game is to win points by going around the board which consists of four types of squares identified by colours: “Statistics and Probability”, “Calculus and Analysis”, “Algebra and Geometry” and “Arithmetic and Number Theory ”. When landing on a square, a question of its category is set out: a correct answer wins 200 points, if wrong it loses 100 points, and not answering causes no effect on the points, but all the same, two minutes out of the 20 minutes that each game lasts are lost. For the game to be over it is necessary, before those 20 minutes run out, to reach the central square and succeed in the final task: four chained questions, one of each type, which must be all answered correctly. It is possible to choose between two levels to play: Level 1, for pre-university students and Level 2 for university students. A prototype of the game is available at the website “Aula de Pensamiento Matemático” developed by the GIE: http://innovacioneducativa.upm.es/pensamientomatematico/. This activity lies within a set of didactic actions which the GIE is developing in the framework of the project “Collaborative Strategies between University and Secondary School Education for the teaching and learning of Mathematics: An Application to solve problems while playing”, a transversal project financed by the UPM.

The online case study development for the teaching of building structures reinforcement

The Reinforcement of Building Structures is one of the topics of the Master in Building Innovation Technology (MBIT) of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). Since the beginning of the delivery of this master, case studies have been chosen as the teaching methodology. For the 2011-2012 course the online education of this subject was implemented, instead of the classical learning based on attendance. Through ICT’s (Information and Communication Technologies) students are provided with much more and more selective information than through the classical learning. ICT’s can be used for search, enquiries and reporting. Using the online tools has been proved, through the results obtained and based on the surveys made amongst students, to be a successful experience.

Educational Project for the Teaching of Control of Electric Traction Drives

Electric vehicles constitute a multidisciplinary subject that involves disciplines such as automotive, mechanical, electrical and control engineering. Due to this multidisciplinary technical nature, practical teaching methodologies are of special relevance. Paradoxically, in the past, the training of engineers specializing in this area has lacked the practical component represented by field tests, due to the difficulty of accessing real systems. This paper presents an educational project specifically designed for the teaching and training of engineering students with different backgrounds and experience. The teaching methodology focuses on the topology of electric traction drives and their control. It includes two stages, a simulation computer model and a scaled laboratory workbench that comprises a traction electrical drive coupled to a vehicle emulator. With this equipment, the effectiveness of different traction control strategies can be analyzed from the point of view of energy efficiency, robustness, easiness of implementation and acoustic noise.