Jean Monnet Module “The European Union Entrepreneurial Environment at HEIs: Changing the World by Technology Ventures” covers the issues of interest for the international engineering education community.

“Engaging Engineering Students in Cultural Diversity and Unity Studies” was the topic of a presentation given by Julia Ziyatdinova on April, 29, 2020 at the IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference EDUCON2020 http://educon-conference.org/educon2020/index.php.

The conference was hosted by the University of Coimbra, University of Porto and Polytechnic of Porto, Portugal. Due to COVID-19 virus outbreak, EDUCON2020 was organized as an online event during the same period of the planned physical event scheduled to Porto, from April 27 to 30, 2020. EDUCON2020 gathered together researchers and professors from all the continents and over 50 countries of the world. The selection procedure was very tough, and the papers submitted to the conference went through the blind peer review twice. The conference focused on "Engineering Education for the Future in a Multicultural and Smart World"; therefore the topic of cultural diversity attracted a lot of interest, and it was accepted.

The conference session where Julia Ziyatdinova gave the presentation was named “Learning Environments that Foster Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, and it joined together participants from Portugal, Mexico, Greece, Portugal, and Russia. Julia Ziyatdinova shared her experience of implementing a Jean Monnet Module at the university for MSc students. She focused on the importance of intercultural communication skills of the students, presented the results of Hofstede’s theory based survey on cultural dimensions among the students participating in the module, and compared them to the Culture Compass™ results. The session participants asked Julia Ziyatdinova questions about further research into the topic, and she said that the next generation students will also be surveyed on cultural dimensions; the results will be summarized and compared to the current work in progress results. The JM Module and research were evaluated by peers from IEEE engineering education society as relevant and up-to-date.

All the presentations given at EDUCON2020 were published as papers in conference proceedings, and the paper is currently available in Scopus, and IEEEXplore databases https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9125305.

Presentation materials:

Engaging Engineering Students in Cultural Diversity and Unity Studies

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