History Book of BEST

that everybody followed; the first steps of the collaboration were also discussed: to collect statistical data referring to the topic discussed all around Europe.

All of the outcomes from IBS, WorkShops, like the one made in Bucharest in 1996, or discussions during GMs were analysed at the working group meeting of H3E. The majority of the meetings between SEFI, CESAER and BEST took place at Brussels at the head office of SEFI, but some of them were organised also in Louvain-la-Neuve, Zürich, Lisbon,

Stockholm, Ghent, Trondheim. Every WG had a medium of 8 meetings through the 4 years of collaboration. At the end of these 4 years, the final outcomes and reports were published and the project was considered a success.

After 4 years H3E was succeeded by several new projects: E4, ETNET21 (two thematic networks on engineering education) and Leonardo 2000 (a project connecting engineering education institutions and industry).

Working day at IBS Stockholm, 1999

The IBS/IBS+ programme of BEST was developed further in co-operation with E4 and ETNET21. The outputs from student discussions at IBS/IBS+ served as input for further discussions in these projects.

The year 2000 brought many changes to the structure of BEST educational events. The EduCo summer meeting of that year took place in Helsinki and was attended by 7 people including Pim Bonne as the coordinator of EduCo, Isabel Arribas Martin and Ronald Van Ham as EduCo Members After reviewing the co-operation with other parties, the most discussed topic was the birth of an new event, BACo, the BEST, Academics and Companies Forum.

Chapter 2:

BEST for Students

During a BACo, students, academics and representatives from companies meet and discuss topics related to education. The goal is to approach the positions of the three stakeholders in education through the exchange of opinions and experience.

“So a BACO could look like:

•Arrival day

•1st day presentations about the topics

•2nd day discussion in mixed groups

•3rd day separate groups

•4th day discussion mixed groups

•5th plenary session to present results

•Departure Day

It was tried few times to organise a BACo, but it would only be in 2005 that the first BACo was organised in Zagreb.

EduCo’s framework was modified that year as well, and there were made comments and modifications to different aspects like mandate of the co-ordinator, the size of the committee, membership and joining the committee, responsibilities of members and other related topics. At that time the committee members were only the people that were co-ordinating the projects of EduCo and the committee co-ordinator was to be elected by the General Assembly.

Only after GA 2002 in Paris, EduCo became an open committee, anyone could join, not only the ones that wanted to become projects co-ordinators. Since then the numbers of members grew up to 20 members.

Another event was about to reshape after the Helsinki meeting: IBS+.

The idea of having IBSs+ came in ‘98-’99. After 3 IBSs+ (Helsinki, Barcelona and Ljubljana), BEST came to the conclusion that the concept resembles too much the normal IBS concept.

So EduCo had to redefine the IBS+ concept.

“So we think in an IBS+ there should be the right balance between interactive classes and sessions by experts, so people will get more personal learning experiences. The experts we need will depend on the topics; they can be professors, EduCo members or professionals. So these trainers can be local persons who have an in-depth knowledge and have good ideas how to fit the training to the topic.”(Helsinki Meeting report)

The strategic plan for the educational committee of BEST for the years 2000-2001 maintained an continuity to the efforts and achievements gained until than. Some new projects were about to be born like a Project with Minerva on the expectations of engineering students (NEXUSNeeds and Expectations of University Students) or the IBS Book.

After withdrawing form one activity of E4 in August 2001, BEST didn’t cut all of the communication with E4, and members of the organization were invited at the E4 Management Meetings , as they felt that BEST is a big stakeholder in the European higher educational system. In parallel to this, BEST continued its educational task through several events like: IBS in Chania, Helsinki, Lisbon, Valladolid, Lyon, and Tallinn.

In this period, the EduCo members did their best to promote the educational matter and the specific events in the BEST world and tried to convince as many LBGs possible to host IBS.

The BACo concept was better defined in 2003 providing information about the participants, the benefits of each stakeholder, the discussion plans and possible themes and the structure of the event. At that time the IBS concept was also redefined and new discussion topics were identified. At that time EduCo was trying to recruit as much members as possible to be able to meet everybody’s expectations.

The year 2004 marked the start of a new collaboration within a thematic network approved by the European Commission, TREE. TREE developed out of the E4 Thematic Network. The project was divided in four lines; each line had a co-ordinator. Each line was further divided in number of SIGs (Special Interest Groups). BEST had a dual role. We were in the management committee (managing the overall network) and we were the leaders of 2 SIGs.

The two other projects ETNET21 and Leonardo 2000 finished with success in that period.

The organization was not just a member of these projects but an active part of it, taking part in the management of the project (the decision making team). In collaboration with these thematic networks, BEST organized events like symposiums and BACo in Vienna, Almada and Zagreb.

Besides the mentioned Thematic Networks, BEST was collaborating or getting in contact with several other organisation and projects: EUCEN (European Universities Continuing

Education Network), EuroPACE, REVE project (Real Virtual Erasmus Project), EAN (European

Access Network), EAEEIE (European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering). BEST had the common goal with these TNs to stress on the importance of higher education and to improve the quality of education.

The Summer Meeting in 2004 that took place in Leuven was very motivating for all the members present. A lot of decisions were taken that would ensure the progress of the Educational Programme. . Some of the main things discussed and worked upon were IBSs, first BACo in Zagreb in March 2005, the involvement of EduCo and BEST in TREE, the improvement of EduCo image inside BEST and the new projects of EduCo.

At PM 2004, EduCo submitted a proposal to change the name of the IBS in “BEST Workshop on Education” (BWoE): “During ICF 2004 we decided to set a common image to all the external events that BEST is organizing. This way, students will see BEST Events as a whole

Chapter 2:

BEST for Students

and will be able to easily identify our events. During discussions at the EduCo Summer Meeting we decided, in a session together with markeTeam, to change the name of the oldest educational event that BEST is organizing IBS into BEST Workshop on Education.”

The year 2005 brought lot’s of educational events for BEST made in collaboration with partner TNs, from which we can mention: “Access to higher Education and Undergraduate

Research” Symposium in Ljubljana in April-May, “Teaching methods of the future: E-Learning and Project Based Learning” Symposium in Aalborg in August, or Symposium in Rome Tor Vergata “The Role of Extra-Curricular Activities in the Formation of Engineers” in the same month. At internal EduCo events, the committee was focusing besides TN on improving the communication between members of the committee, between EduCo and LBG and trying to improve the quality of events.

At the summer meeting in Athens in 2005 the idea of Local Events on Education was discussed for the first time. After a session held by Stefan Dumitrescu from LBG Bucharest, it was settled EduCo’s involvement and some guidelines for the organizing LBG:

•Number of days : 2.

•Logistics: 2 working rooms (for Discussion Groups), one big lecture room.

•Number of participants: minimum 10.

•Including the event in other bigger events: for BACo it would be ideal to be included in a job fair; in general, it’s flexible.

•Content: the report in English but the discussions in native language “

Another project that BEST educational committee decided to work upon is Recognition. Its aim is to help students attending BEST courses in having those courses recognised in their universities as part of their curricula and thus getting credits for attending BEST courses. The first phase of the project was having LBGs answering a questionnaire about recognition of

BEST Courses in their universities and to inform students that they can ask for credits from their university for the BEST courses attended in other European university. At RMs in fall, they were handing out questionnaire about recognition.

At PM 2005 the first issue of Educational Times, a magazine focusing on the educational experiences and matters of students, was published.

At the end of 2005 there were more and more people interested in this educational issues and the committee had a number of 10 EduCos attending the PM as other committee delegates or LBG delegates.

The planning of events went very well for 2006 as many LBGs decided to involve more and more into the Educational Chapter of BEST: Istanbul took the challenge in organizing a BEST Academics and Companies Forum, Madrid and Porto decided to organise Symposium of Education with Students and Academics all over Europe. Some of the topics discussed were:

Accreditation, The role of extra curricular activities in the formation of engineers, Ethics in Engineering Education or Sustainable Development in Engineering Education.

In 2006 the cooperation was well with the following TNs: ReVe, Eucen, Ean and Tree. During PM Ghent in 2006 BEST participation in 2 European educational projects was officially approved.

BEST became an official partner in SPUTNIC (Seminars Promoting the Use of Technologies for Networking and International Collaboration). BEST was the only one student organisation in this one year project. BEST became one of the 10 partners in the TN VM-BASE (Virtual Mobility before and after student exchanges) and the second student organisation in it. This TN was under the coordination of EuroPACE and its duration was 2 years. Through both projects BEST gained visibility and a chance of influencing the development of the educational system by making students voices heard.

At GA France in 2007, the EduCo delegates proposed to formalize the cooperation with SEFI

(Société Européenne pour la Formation des Ingénieurs / European Society for Engineering

Education), FEANI (European Federation of National Engineering Associations), and IFEES (International Federation of Engineering Education Societies). The delegates agreed that

BEST would become official partners of these organizations. At PM Valladolid in the same year, other 2 co-operations with ERABEE and ENAEE were approved.

BEST continued its task in the Higher Education Systems in Europe in the same way by establishing new co-operations with TN like TREE-TWO and ESTIA-EARTH.

Besides the efforts sustained by hundreds of EduCos, the task is not finished yet. BEST represents students in the relationship with Academics all around Europe. Through Events on Education, BEST strives to improve little by little these educational systems. But there is more to be done….

Article written by Mirela Andriescu and Pim Bonne

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BEST Online

People BEST started realising the need of using on-line and web technologies since the very beginning of the organisation. As technical students, BEST members were aware of the advantages of these technologies, and furthermore had technical skills in order to be able to use them.

Probably, the first central FTP server appeared sometime in 1994 and people started to think about Internet domains and best.eu.org. The public page became the central information page.

In 1996, the first ideas of an on-line network occurred. Mailing lists in Budapest.

Till around 1996 the whole procedure for applying and getting accepting in a summer course, was done manually during events. BEST members were exchanging hand-written applications and then deciding on who the participants will be. The most painful procedure thought, was the optimisation.

At the PM in Trondheim, people decided that we should try a new optimisation procedure that would make the life of everybody easier, and result in fewer mistakes. The procedure remained very similar to the original, only that now the idea was to automate it for faster and more reliable results.

This automated optimisation procedure was a milestone that marked the beginning of the on-line era of BEST. Here’s a short time line of what happened since 1987:

•1987People are communicating with snail mail, phone and fax.

•Early 90’s- E-mail servers in Grenoble, Newcastle, Budapest. These servers were not owned by BEST.

•1993-

o Introduction of email usage to network. o Electronic document collection began

•1994 - Introduction of ftp and WWW technologies for the first time. An online archive was also introduced using the FTP technology.

•1995

o Fist public website appears

o First version of a www. This version how ever was static.

o First attempt of a decentralised automatic system for application to our courses is developed by Grenoble students.

• 1996

o Introduction of weekly inter-LBG meetings in IRC, to strength the communication.

o Summer Programme 96 is running. It was the predecessor of Johnny.

Chapter 3:

BEST Online

• 1997

o Johnny97 is running. At this point there were season specific accounts that were renewed in every season

o Discussion about a new web domain.

o New Web design of BEST, which was financially supported by H3E. The domain ‘best.eu.org’ was also obtained and used later this year.

o First idea of Minerva popped up. It started getting designed during WS in Eindhoven. Mock-ups were ready later this year.

o First use of lbg@BEST.eu.org addresses.

o First use of Lotus Notes towards the end of the year

• 1998

o Application to internal events via Lotus Notes is enabled. www.best. eu.org/lbgname is available.

o Johnny98 is running. Season independent accounts are used for the first time.

o Minerva gets implemented using Lotus Notes. It is not launched however o Bug submitter installed

o Technical archives are installed in Lotus Notes and used for the first time in the beginning of the year

o Near the end of the year the idea to drop Lotus Notes and re-do everything in java/sql occurred

• 1999

o New server for BEST (a.k.a. Ana), used as a DNS server and ran mailing lists. Supposedly it was the first server actually owned by BEST. The machine is still in BEST office in Tallinn, but it’s not hooked on-line.

o First version of Makumba appears, called Meta-Data at the moment and later Macumba. It was used for implementing Private Area and Johnny. It was done during a summer course that was partially taught by ITC

• 2000

o Second server (a.k.a. Malaka) was set in Stockholm. The server ran Lotus licence for Lotus Notes.

o Helpdesk was done using PHP

o The idea of Karamba first occurred

• 2001

o First idea of the merging [5]

o Around May 2001 the Public Website is redesigned and launched

• 2002

o Johnny-TS (Transition System) was launched in April 19th o Minerva-TS was launched in 6th of June

o First ParaDe implementation

o November: Private Area is using Makumba for the first time o LBG Reports started to be filled in online

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o Tequila was bought

• 2003

o CVS and Lotus files were lost due to a big crash o Makumba is used in www.BEST.eu.org

o News Engine in www.BEST.eu.org

o Helpdesk implemented using Makumba

• 2004

o Wiki trial on Makumba

o Public Website is redesigned again, and is launched at the end of the year o News Engine on Private Area

o Minerva is renamed into BEST Career Centre

• 2005

o BAS LBG Area is integrated with Private Area in the beginning of the year, since it was totally independent previously.

• 2006

o Merger is launched for Private Area and BAS users

o Layout integration of external pages, so they all have the same layout (BAS, BCC, and Public Website)

• 2007

o 30th of July: Local Events feature is launched, known before as Jimmy o Spring Season: P@B is launched but not announced. Some LBGs are selected in order to test the system.

o Summer Season: P@B is officially launched. It was later called BEST

Teachers’ Area.

• 2008

o Merger is launched for all users

o The Unified System is launched. The merging dream finally came to life!

From the first on-line optimisation in 1996, till today, a lot of things changed in the way we are providing our services to the students and members. However, no matter how advanced our systems are nowadays, they still work on those same principles that were set in the very beginnings. That’s why it’s worthy looking back in the past to research about the development of our tools.

Minerva

The first idea of Minerva was born by Belgian GA 1997 organisers, when they were thinking of several ways of fundraising. They were thinking of creating a kid of forum on the internet where students and companies could meet. The GA team presented the idea to a lot of companies and it was clear that most companies had an urgent need for such a project. However due to lack of time, the GA team was not able to work for a stable programme, since it was clear that the project was only worth the try when if it was thoroughly prepared and well thought.

Chapter 3:

BEST Online

The reasons that pushed BEST members to go on with this project were:

•Growing awareness of internationalisation (and even globalisation) among engineering students and companies

•The need for a tool to help students find a challenging international career had grown

•Companies having difficulties to find internationally minded students abroad.

After the GA, the X Board worked on with the idea and started surveying discussions with several parties (student organisations in charge of job fairs (bonding), companies, professional recruitment companies, etc.) and decided to go on with the launch of such a project.

From the beginning it was clear that a Virtual Job fair could only supplement a real job fair, and not completely replace it. The idea was to link this system with EFC (European Fairs Club), which would be a network of Engineering Job fairs, organised by students all over Europe. With this linkage, a huge network of engineering job-fora would be created, and covered by the Virtual Job fair.

The child needed a name and a board member came up with Minerva (Moving Into New

Engineering Recruitment by Victual Access). Since everybody loved to have finally a woman on-board, Minerva was there to stay.

The first steps for implementing this system took place in a WorkShop organised by LBG

Eindhoven in October 1997. There the goals of the project were set, and it was decided that the features of Minerva would be:

•Companies’ Information: The company can put information about the company and can announce vacancies, internships, seminars, case-days, etc. Specialised application forms can be added here.

•The Minerva Guide: Students, who want, can put their CV in the Minerva Guide. The student will get a personal password providing him/her the possibility to correct his/her data and to withdraw from the database whenever he/she feels like. If the data is not be updated during one year, the system will demand the student to update his/her profile. If not, the CV will be automatically erased. In that way, we give the freedom to the student to withdraw or change whatever and whenever he/she feels like and we also guarantee an up-to-date database at the same time. Companies participating in Minerva will get access to this base and through smart search engines; they can find the employee of their dreams....

•Minerva’s Message Party: Students can indicate the companies where they are most interested in, in that way subscribing themselves in the companies’ mailing list. When the company has an interesting announcement to make, they can mail to all interested students.

•European Fairs Club: All info about the real fairs, organised by the EFC can be added here. In this way a student can look for information in Minerva and check

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