The development of existing technologies and the emergence of new technologies aiming at the total decarbonization of the buildings sector by 2050 requires and encourages upskilling and reskilling of existing professionals as well as the development of new subjects from higher education courses to be able to respond to the demands of these challenges. In responding to those challenges, the main objective of the research is to design, implement, and evaluate a novel, integrated, and transnational educational approach aimed at equipping professionals and students in the construction sector with the necessary skills to achieve sustainable and energy-efficient buildings. This study aligns with the European Union’s 2050 decarbonization goals by developing innovative methodologies that address the multidisciplinary challenges of sustainable building design, operation, and renovation. The proposed educational approach was developed in the framework of an Erasmus+ project entitled “Training for Sustainable and Healthy Building for 2050 (BUILD2050)”. Six higher education institutions from five European countries joined forces to create transversal skills in the building sector knowledge for emerging challenges through an integrated training composed of eight training courses for students and professionals of the construction area. In this work, the pedagogical approach used to develop the course contents, curricular development issues, technology, and infrastructure, as well as student support, the results obtained from the evaluation carried out after the pilot training of the eight training courses, and best practices and lessons learned, are presented and discussed. The courses’ learning objectives, the learning material, and the assessment activities were well-accomplished. However, based on the feedback of students and teachers, some improvements for future editions of the courses are required.
This paper arises from a study conducted on a new mathematics' course unit of a tertiary technological course taught in a polytechnic institute where a learner-centred approach was applied. The design of the constructive pedagogical alignment of the course unit integrated the objectives, contents, assessments and the information obtained in the surveys carried out on students, as well as the training techniques chosen. The collaborative working group was the main active learning process chosen in this application of the learner-centred approach. Challenges, difficulties and benefits from applying this active learning process are considered in this paper. Some outcomes of the academic performance are also presented and discussed.
Flexible systems are obtained from systems of linear equations by adding to the elements of the coefficient matrix and the right-hand side scalar neutrices, which are convex groups of (non-standard) real numbers. The neutrices model imprecisions, giving rise to calculation rules extending informal error calculus. Stability conditions for flexible systems are given in terms of relative imprecision and size of determinants. We then apply the explicit formula for the elements of the successive intermediate matrices of the Gauss-Jordan elimination procedure to find the solution of flexible systems, keeping track of the error terms at every stage. The solution respects the original imprecisions in the right-hand side and is the same as the one given by Cramer’s rule.