The Centrale Lille Modern Languages teaching department took part in the Erasmus+ project entitled “I-BEE-VR: Immersive Business and Engineering English in Virtual Reality: A Tool for the Sustainable Mobility of the Skilled Workforce in the EU”. Recently audited by the European Commission, this project has received the title of Good Practice Example.
Over 3 years, from 2018 to 2021, this project involved 5 university partners (ITU Istanbul – coordinator, Centrale Lille, UPC Barcelona, TU Vienna, UP Krakow) and a Turkish start-up. The idea was to create an educational method for engineers to learn English through virtual reality. The members were tasked with creating a thematic work module, each describing a typical engineering situation. For example, for module 3 “Develop and Make”, created by Simon Davies, Véronique Dziwniel and Jean-Jacques Le Yeuc’h, the learner is placed in a situation where they must go through a production process to develop and manufacture their product prototype.
While the 5 modules can be followed in order, starting with a job search in a company through to marketing and selling the manufactured product, they are also independent, so that teachers and learners can access the module(s) of their choice, in line with needs and interests, and adapt each course to their own learning context. The courses follow a task-based approach, where each module ends with one or more actual tasks that students must complete as if they were in an authentic engineering situation. Each module also contains 2 or 3 situations that learners access through virtual reality.
Discover the project in detail: https://ibeevr.itu.edu.tr/