1. Course Concept

You are thinking of coming to TU Dortmund University for your engineering master program. Great! That is an excellent option for you to combine excellent engineering education and personal development in an international environment in order to broaden your horizon. However, coming to Germany can mean a cultural clash as many things may work differently in comparison to your home country.

Therefore, a special online course was developed at the IUL in order to prepare you for your stay in Germany. During this course you will:

• get to know your destination as future MMT-student
• be able to gain fundamental experiences in working online with international colleagues on engineering topics        

The course will consist of parts where we come together in an online room and parts where you will have to work together in teams. The course is fully online, so that you can take part from your home country, from your computer before you start your trip to Dortmund.

2. Course Objectives

The course idea is mainly that you get to know each other, TU Dortmund University and the area around here. You start working in international teams to experience and enjoy the transnational nature of engineering work. Hence, the course aims at the following main objectives:

• Getting to know the IUL, TU Dortmund University, and Dortmund
• Getting to know your future fellow students and teaching staff
• Working online together in international teams on current engineering challenges

For example, one part of the course will be, to perform explicit engineering experiments using the equipment here at the IUL. That means that you will be able work remotely from your home PC with testing machines and conduct real experiments. This opportunity is not given to many students at this point. At the moment, it is exclusively offered to the MMT students. Hence, it is a unique chance for you.

3. Course Dates and Time

Course normally starts end of August/beginning of September. During the course, there will be eight online live sessions (about 90 minutes). Between these sessions you will be expected to do preparatory work for the course (like doing online research or preparing short presentations). All students who got admission will be individully contacted in order to arrange the Pre Course.

This years dates and times are as following:

• 05.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC
• 07.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC
• 11.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC
• 13.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC
• 18.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC
• 20.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC
• 25.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC
• 27.09.2018 - 02:00-03:30 pm UTC

4. Course Equipment

In order to take part in this course, not much equipment is needed. For the communication during the online sessions, we will mainly use the software Adobe Connect, which allows us to do classical online meetings. Therefore, it is necessary that you have a PC or Laptop with a stable internet connection, a working audio headset (speaker + microphone), and sometimes a web cam. It is important that you find a quiet place in order to take part in the live sessions. Hence, sitting in a café or in the dining hall will be problematic because of the ambient noise. Between the sessions, it will be necessary to communicate via mail, Skype, or any other communication tool.

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