Author(s): F. Molkenthin
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Web-based Collaborative Engineering; Open Distance Learning
Abstract: This paper describes the international Open Distance Learning Course ‘HydroWeb'. This course deals with the introduction of Web-based Collaborative Engineering in standard education programmes of hydro-science and hydro-engineering. Organized under the umbrella of IAHR and ETNET21 this course is a collaboration from ten universities from all over the world. Started in 1999 by BTU Cottbus and IHE Delft the course demonstrates the potential and innovative opportunities of Web-Technology in education, research and engineering: Students from the different partner universities form small distributed teams to solve a given river engineering problem in a time window of two weeks. To overcome the spatial distribution the students apply modern Web technology such as video conferencing, application sharing and document management. All results as well as the final reports are presented as Web document on a Web-based project platform (http: //www. hydro-web. org). Besides the experiences to apply standard Web tools and working methods in the daily engineering work the students improve their soft skills operate successfully in international and interdisciplinary project environments.
Year: 2003