During the last months, ESSENSE has developed its Educational Philosophy and Joint Curriculum. You can find the full summary in here. 

The Joint Curriculum defines the necessary knowledge and skills components regarding key principles of BIM; Smart Housing and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). It covers different aspects related to CAD Design, sensors architecture and BIM management with training tools, didactic materials and eLearning environment to address the different profiles of learners in a target-oriented way.

The Joint Curriculum is divided into 5 modules:

• Basic concepts on Building Information Modelling

The objective of the unit „Basic Concepts on BIM“ is to obtain an overview of the definition of BIM and the possible uses. What are the advantages of BIM or computer-aided design concerning the data associated with the 3D objects.

• The needs of the senior citizens and their caretakers

The unit “The needs of the senior citizens and their caretakers” aims to prepare building designers, construction workers, and related professionals to make design decisions that support healthy active ageing, and to implement those solutions in new buildings and refurbishments by focusing on user-centred design approaches.

• Smart Housing and AAL

This unit’s purpose is to introduce the concept of AAL and Smart Housing to the students. Furthermore, this unit will allow students to get insights into the basic principles of sensing, sensor data acquisition, signal processing and modelling based on data, to design and implement applications for assisting older adults.

• Interactions between BIM, Smart Housing and AAL

As a goal, this unit “Interactions between BIM, Smart Housing and AAL” aims to introduce the student to using AAL principles and Smart Housing technologies within the BIM method. How to combine the principles of Ambient Assisting Living with the concept of Building Information Modelling.

• Project Management, Innovation Management and collective competencies for optimum implementation of BIM principles and AAL concepts.

Module 5 comprises all the necessary knowledge for the implementation of BIM methodology from an Innovation Management approach. This module will provide learners with different concepts and methodologies to make the most of the implementation of BIM.

These modules will be freely available at the end of the project in 2021 on the ESSENSE Collaborative Platform with innovative quizzes, exercises and some extra lectures.

The ESSENSE Project was presented during the 14th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference, INTED2020, that was held in Valencia (Spain) on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of March, 2020. INTED is one of the largest international education conferences for lecturers, researchers, technologists and professionals from the educational sector. After 14 years, it has become a reference event where more than 700 experts from 80 countries will get together to present their projects and share their knowledge on teaching and learning methodologies and innovations on educational technology. During these days, Mr. Carlos González from CETEM performed a poster presentation where all the interested assistants could share their feedback and ask relevant questions about the topic. There was sound interest from different Universities from the United Kingdom, Spain, Qatar, Germany, Mexico and the United States. These universities will be contacted during our next activities related to the Blueprint definition and Workplan for the period 2021-2024.

The third transnational project meeting for the EU-project “ESSENSE” took place in the facilities of Ageing Lab near the Andalusian city Jaén in Spain. The aim of the project is to develop a complete educational offer for universities and continuing education providers, combining the topics of Building Information Modeling with “Active Assisted Living” (also: “Ambient Assisted Living” – in short: AAL) by the end of the project in 2021.

The project meeting in Jaén focused on the presentation of a “Educational Philosophy” and the “Joint Curriculum”, in which the structure and rough contents of the higher education programme are defined. The validation of this Joint Curriculum by relevant stakeholders is scheduled for early December 2019.

In terms of content, the partners from Spain, Germany, North Macedonia and Slovenia discussed the requirements of the collaborative learning platform on which ESSENSE offers the training programme with didactic materials such as learning videos. The didactic content of the curriculum was another focus of the meeting. A total of five modules will be developed on topics such as “Basic Concepts of BIM”, “Needs of the senior citizens and their caretakers” or “Smart Housing and Ambient Assisted Living principles”.

We thank Ageing Lab and all project partners for the great organisation and the successful meeting! Further information about the project and the possibility to subscribe to the ESSENSE-newsletter can be found on the website of the ESSENSE-project.