Work-in-progress: European platform for innovation and collaboration between engineer students (EPICES)

EPICES is an Erasmus plus strategic partnership project (September 2014–August 2016) co-funded by the EU. There are seven academic partners and one association engaged in this project. The purpose of EPICES is to develop a European collaboration on at-a-distance project-based learning framework and method, based on already existing and still developing technical platforms, i.e. collaborative and engineering tools. A special focus will be made on teachers' role and students' coaching, from the analysis of what a coach should be in project based learning to training packages for teachers and development of assessment methods. This focus is a key issue to be discussed in order to develop project based learning for engineer students, especially in international and/or industrial context, which requires strong and effective collaboration of all actors to succeed and innovate within the project based learning framework. In EPICES, sub-projects are developed, which place students in the middle of real industrial European at a distance projects, i.e. in the heart of the future job of every current engineer student. These sub-projects are study cases, study materials, and allow many feedbacks and intellectual outputs on coaching, teachers' role and assessment issues. Since its beginning, EPICES has gained in maturity and in this work-in-progress the objective is to present the first achievements of three intellectual outputs: establishing a model of facilitator roles and skills in project-based learning in European engineering education; studying teacher facilitation in preparation for training of teacher, creating assessment methodology for project-based learning in engineering studies and development of tools for assessment of skills.