Overview of the Project
The ENEPLAN project was conceived to address the lack of interdisciplinary approaches in higher education on energy planning and RES development in Mediterranean areas, by increasing the capacities of future professionals through innovative ICT-based educational approaches, able to integrate different disciplines (spatial planning, environment, engineering, landscape) and foster collaboration with research and business activities in the RES sector, thus keeping up with its rapid technological innovation.
Addressing this issue is crucial to ensure sustainability in energy planning, and form more qualified, up to date, employable professionals, able to deal with innovative RES-based solutions and with the complexity of their socioeconomic and environmental context.
To attain this goal, ENEPLAN proposes an alternation of desk activities and workshops aimed at the collective production, development, testing and practical application of Open Educational Resources on energy planning, based on the tool of collaborative Concept maps.
The use of the concept maps tools for learning purposes
A Concept map is an ICT tool to represent relationships among concepts, and, as OER, it can be “customized” according to users’ needs, resulting in a versatile instrument for educational purposes and professional upgrade, as well as in a stimulus for developing applied research.
Through this tool, ENEPLAN aims to:
- improve the quality and modernisation of HE curricula and teaching and research activities in the field of integrated energy planning;
- increase the labour market relevance of learning provisions and qualifications, and the employability of graduates;
- strengthen the relations between HEI and the wider socio-economic environment, by involving academics, students, planners and enterprises in the creation of common tools and networks.
OERs, uploaded on the ENEPLAN e-learning platform, will be available in English and Arabic, to be exploitable by a wide number of users in Europe and in the Arabic-speaking Mediterranean countries.
The project will aim at:
- Testing the effectiveness of Open Educational Resources based on the tool of collaborative Concept maps, to improve the quality of HE teaching and research activities in the field of integrated energy planning;
- Helping the modernization of higher education curricula (by integrating them with issues such as energy planning, renewable energy sources, evaluation of the environmental impacts of RES infrastructures, life-cycle analysis, etc.);
- Contributing in increasing teachers’, researchers’ and students’ knowledge and skills in integrated energy planning, while innovating HE teaching and learning practices;
- Increasing labour market relevance of learning provisions and qualifications, thus reinforcing the employability of graduates;
- Strengthening the relations between HEI and the wider socio-economic environment, by developing common tools and networks involving planners, academics, researchers and enterprises operating in the energy sector;
- Establishing a network among Mediterranean Universities, in Europe and outside, with the aim of improving their educational capacities in the field of integrated energy planning.
