Win:
Here are some quick responses. You would probably want to come back to the responders with individual feedback. I have not yet been able to look at INEER in detail,
1)First, I would like to convey my positive impression of the conference, and express my thanks to your powerful and restrained handling of it. The sustainability through commitments up to 2008 is impressive. Regional satellite conferences are not as easy to sustain. If you decide to do those-South America may prove to be a good initial testing ground. The support of US delegate participation, is a key factor in the success of the conference. Experience, with other, non supported engineering education conferences shows that US participation is almost non existent. Moreover, US participation draws participants from other countries . In my case, I would not have attended had I not known there was a US participation above a critical mass.As we discussed- a further important factor would be the assignment of a full pubication of selected papers (initially by recommendations of session chairmen) in an established journal. I have received several submissions, and have been promised some more from conference contributors. This should be considered for the Oslo conference.
2) Intr:The trend of engineering education efforts in various countries is somewhat disintegrating at the moment. New organisations have sprung up in the UK (Sheffield Hallam initiative) and Germany (German Engineering Education Network). The German effort is associated with Monash, UICEE. The British effort is 'insular'. Except for UICEE which is run by Pudlowski, other international efforts have had limited success-as ASEE and IGIP have shown.
b)recommendations:
The language barriers are definitely there, but I do not believe there is a
realistc choice between English and all the other languages. In fact,
Germany has been starting to deal with this problem by reapidly establishing
new Bachelor of engineering courses completely in English.For example-
Electronics in English (Hamburg), in association with Mainland China.It was
a bit surprising, though to see the relatively weak English of our Taiwanese
colleagues-the problem is bigger than I envisaged. But, from the efforts
currently being made there-they realize the problem, as English is an
essential lifeline in international economic competition.
First and foremost- you could base international efforts on top class ICEE conferences to establish credibility.
This means broader international participation. At least some focused sessions with top contributions both invited and contributed. More discussion time with recommendations by first line administarators and academics. I am somewhat sceptical of translated software. The experience I have had as director of an institute with focus on Multimedia engineering education software development-has been that translation of software is not cost effective and by the time it is done, the software needs to be revised. Similar experiences were expresses by Peter Hicks ( with whom we had some interactivity in SW developments). The EU has a large fund of experience in international collaborative efforts, both in engineering education and telematics. (For example: I am involved in a telematics project between UK.Poland,Ukraine and Germany-part of it is to disseminate the EDEC (in which Peter Hicks is involved)software to universities and SME's). It may be advisable to discuss collaboration with the EU and also with some of the project leaders in these collaborations, before launching such ventures.
If you are interested-I could think of some focused topics.
3) Introduction: Internationally supported courseware may have some chance and merits.
Recommendations: Have a panel of experts submit guidlelines and course of action. Try to get it approved by official organisations in countries involved in the developments. In particular one needs to allow for inputs from different sources online in addition to the basic software.The software should best be developed by an international collaboration of experts in the field.
This is it for the moment.
Many thanks
Dublin Institute of Technology
Bolton St., Dublin, Ireland