A NOVEL APPROACH FOR UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER EDUCATION IN ENGINEERING STUDIES

The researcher education course for undergraduate engineering students has been developed in the Department of Process and Environmental Engineering at the University of Oulu. The course familiarizes students to research and researcher's work and aims to encourage them toward a research career. The approach of the course is unique in the field of engineering education in Finland. In this paper, the establishment of the course is discussed in the light changing targets and requirements of higher engineering education. Further, the course development from contact lecturing toward distance education is described. Finally, the possibility to use new and more versatile learning methods together with the traditional lecturing methods is considered based on the feedback given by the students.