On November 7–8, representatives of Lviv Polytechnic National University, Bialystok University of Technology, Poland, CentraleSupelec University, France, and the University of Nis, Serbia, gathered in the French city of Gif-sur-Yvette for a kick-off meeting of the CONN’COR project funded by the Erasmus+ programme. The project, entitled Connect, Compare and Repair for a Common Future with Ukraine: A Focus on Electrical Engineering Teaching, aims to promote cooperation and improve educational approaches in electrical engineering, electronics and related technical disciplines.
The Lviv Polytechnic team includes Iryna Moroz, Project Coordinator, Associate Professor at the Department of General Physics, the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Fundamental Sciences, Professor Iryna Yaremchuk, Head of the Department of Electronic Engineering, the Institute of Telecommunications, Radioelectronics and Electronic Engineering, and Professor Oksana Hoholiuk, Head of the Department of Theoretical and General Electrical Engineering, the Institute of Power Engineering and Control Systems. The coordinators from the partner institutions are Professor Jaroslaw Makal, Poland, Associate Professor Emilie Avignon-Meseldzija, France, and Professor Goran Djordjevic, Serbia. During two days of intense discussions, the teams outlined detailed steps how to launch and implement the project.
CONN’COR started on November 1 and will last for one year. One of the important tasks is to establish communication between Ukrainian students who are unable to travel abroad due to the war and their peers from Poland, Serbia and France. This will include online discussions of education in Ukraine during the war time and a series of lectures on the resilience of the energy sector in wartime, the introduction of new topics in electrical engineering into the curricula of relevant disciplines, and the psychological aspects of adapting academics and students to teaching and learning in critical conditions. The project also features the development of new courses focused on the reconstruction of electrical and communication networks, the creation of home laboratories, the exchange of Ukrainian experience in teaching in difficult conditions, and finally, actions to strengthen the coherence in teaching in the relevant disciplines.
Lviv Polytechnic’s participation in the CONN’COR project aims to achieve four key goals:
- to ensure effective communication between students of all partner institutions;
- to strengthen the network of cooperation between universities for long-term partnership;
- to improve the skills of academics in the preparation of educational and scientific projects;
- to provide partners from other countries with the opportunity to learn about the difficulties faced by Ukrainian academics and students, as well as methods of overcoming them.
The two-day kick-off meeting was the beginning of an important collaboration that lays the groundwork for a fruitful year aimed at improving educational practices in challenging times. During these two days, many great ideas were shared, and a new team was made. We believe that the participation of our university academics in this project will be an important step in developing new approaches and methodologies that will help improve the quality of higher education in Ukraine and will be a valuable support for our colleagues and students.
