Engineering students' insufficient work experience, lack of knowledge or misconception about their own abilities to work and communicate efficiently on a complex engineering project, as well as their abilities to manage work efficiently can be a difficult task for lecturers to teach at university. Challenge-based learning (CBL) has been implemented in engineering higher education because it constitutes an active learning pedagogy that provides students with a framework to acquire and develop key transversal disciplinary skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, project leadership or communication skills. The experiential learning that a CBL framework offers allows students to work collaboratively in real-life problems that are challenging to solve. The authors of this paper are involved in integrating the teaching of two important transversal skills, project leadership and management and communication to manage a project and communicate it to different stakeholders for different purposes, into a challenge-based year-long course. In this paper, we report on our experience in teaching master engineering students these two transversal skills by means of a pedagogical intervention that is integrated within a course based on challenge-based pedagogy. The pedagogical intervention is described and subsequently students' perceived usefulness of such intervention is explained.

The aim of this paper is to present the experience and lessons learned of experimental implementing of blended learning methodology in the Master programme "Environomical Pathways for Sustainable Energy Systems" (SELECT) at the Royal Institute of Technology' (KTH in Stockholm) and the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya.BarcelonaTech (UPC in Barcelona), in common and remotely taught courses (shared curriculum) under a transnational framework. Shared curriculum has been designed and strongly connected to the intended learning outcomes (ILO's) of the programme. Blended learning was implemented to improve the efficiency of the learning process through updated technological means of instruction and to have the same curriculum with equally shared teaching load to ensure that students by the end of year I have the same competence and background. It can be noted that, at least from the perspective of academic performance, the implementation of blended learning in the shared SELECT curriculum does not have a significant impact, although local students show slightly higher grade point average (GPA). Finally and from our general experience with students, it is possible to identify the interaction of communication as one of the key challenges and factors in blended education.

In this paper an innovative experience developed by seven Universities (six European and one non-European) to teach a two weeks summer course in a non-conventional, remotely way is presented. The course is developed using a Project Based teaching-learning methodology and it is also designed to have a deeper knowledge of the relationship between sustainable development and the economic and financial conditions. The experience is innovative because the technology used, allowed students to share knowledge and participate from countries all over the world. Competences of students in this context are measured and strengthened. The most interesting issues, challenges and difficulties are presented here. Conclusions help professors to propose actions to improve the methodology in order to strengthen students' competences.

In this paper an innovative experience developed by seven Universities (six European and one non-European) to teach a two weeks summer course in a non-conventional, remotely way is presented. The course is developed using a Project Based teaching-learning methodology and it is also designed to have a deeper knowledge of the relationship between sustainable development and the economic and financial conditions. The experience is innovative because the technology used, allowed students to share knowledge and participate from countries all over the world. Competences of students in this context are measured and strengthened. The most interesting issues, challenges and difficulties are presented here. Conclusions help professors to propose actions to improve the methodology in order to strengthen students’ competences.

In biomass gasification process the producer gas generated can be cleaned by water scrubbing. Some of the organic compounds generated are entrained together with other flue gas dust particles in to the cooling stream. The treatment/disposal of this waste stream remains a challenge because some of the compounds are toxic to humans and the environment. The objective of this study was to assess pollution levels resulting from organic constituents of flue gas filtration in a downdraft gasifier. The study involved assessment of the concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the liquid effluence. The impacts on human health and environment are also discussed and recommendations on measures to minimize the pollution levels are provided. A downdraft gasifier fed with maize cobs was used and condensates were collected by cooling of producer gas. Samples were preserved in a cooler at about 2 degrees C for 24 h before analysis using a capillary gas chromatographer connected to a mass spectrometer (GCMS). The results were that concentrations of: naphthalene was 204.3 mg/m, benzene 17.92 mg/m(3), toluene 182.94 mg/m(3), ethylbenzene 202.43 mg/m(3), 1,2-dimethyl benzene 359.28 mg/m(3) and 1,3+1,4-dimethyl benzene 1016.18 mg/m(3). It was observed that the concentrations of naphthalene and xylene were considerably higher than the recommended permissible exposure limits (PELs) on both human health and the environment. On the other hand, the concentrations of benzene, toluene, and ethylbenzene were below the PEL. Generally this study indicated that the liquid effluent meets regulatory standards, but it would be interesting to carryout tests with different biomass fuel types which this study recommends.

This paper presents an innovative experience that was developed by six European universities to teach a common course in an unconventional, remote way, to geographically-separate groups of students. The course is especially designed to enable engineering students to learn the basics of how the European social and sustainable model works, to acquire some basic cultural and religious awareness, and to stimulate transnational group discussions on such intercultural affairs. One overarching goal of this T.I.M.E. (Top International Managers for Europe) European Summer School (TESS) course is to identify some of the challenges that an academic collaboration organization like T.I.M.E. faces for future education, especially considering that the computer literate and highly web-based children who are born today will, with their expectations of ‘virtual 3D encounters’, be entering university by 2030. This web-based, social interaction experience has been developed over the last four years. This paper gives the results.