engleski

The New Teaching Methods for the Engineers in the Digital Era: A description of a scientific and teaching longitudinal project titled „Stakeholders' Profile in the Geospatial Industry“

The paper gives the insights into the author's scientific and teaching longitudinal project titled „Stakeholders' Profile in Geodesy and Geoinformatics“ on which she has been working for the last several years. The project is conceived as educating network aiming to connect the academic comunity to the business sector in the geospatial industry in order to provide the students with a more realistic picture regarding their expectations when entering the ral world of work and careers. She started working on the project in the course of fourth (summer) semester of academic year 2012/2013. The project aims to provide the students with support in making proactive decisions regarding their career paths as well as enable enable employers to get involved actively in the process of creating courses and programmes that are being thought at the Faculty, what in turn, aims to reduce costs of studying. The project incites a students' creativity and helps them to get acquinted with team work and critical thinking. The project provides the teachers with a feedback information regarding the change of the students' attitudes about and expectations from both teaching and learning at the universities that are now in the digital era highly mediated by a constant and rapid technological development. Six generations of the undergraduate students of geodesy and geoinformatics were included by the project sofar, and were given an opportunity to participate in the fieldwork through learning from a sample of four groups of stakeholders in geodesy and geoinformatics representing companies, institutions in Croatia, international organizations and media. Four sources of data were analysed in the paper: 1. the students' perceptions of the stakeholders observed that were based on their written seminars – a total sum of 200 students' homeworks was included in a sample ; 2. the interviews with the entrepreneurs in the field of geodesy and geoinformatics held by the students ; 3. financial statements representing business performance of the companies observed – a total sum of 409 Croatian geodetic companies was analysed (Source: Financial ageny – Fina) ; 4. Secondary information about the geodetic sector such as reports, statistical data and on-line resources. The paper includes preliminary results of a social survey conducted by the author and logistically supported by the undergraduate students of geodesy and geoinformatics in the course of fourth (summer) semester of the academic year 2012/2013 on a sample of companies, geodetic institutions in Croatia, international organizations and media. During the fieldwork which lasted three and a half months, 83 students were divided into 41 teams who were given the assistance by 77 people belonging to the geodetic stakeholders managed to create 42 profiles of stakeholders in geodesy. The project connected 160 people coming from 12 counties of Croatia and 9 states. The sudents addressed 42 stakeholders for focused interviewes, 36 of whom accepted the initiative and answered the questions posed. The survey was continued in the course of third (winter) semester of academic year 2013/2014 and a sample of stakeholders included in the project was further extended. During only one semester, 36 geodetic companies, 13 institutions in Croatia, 10 international organizations and 7 media were observed and analysed. The new generations of students were also involved with the analysis of stakeholders' profile in the godetic sector. A concept of the project has been developing gradually step by step. Two international conferences (2014 ; 2015), two symposia (2014 ; 2015) and one workshop were organised by the Faculty of Geodesy and the Chair of Organizational Theory and Management in collaboration with several godetic stakeholders to date to give feedback to scientific community, geodetic institutions and the business sector concerning the results of the project. These conferences confirmed the importance of case studies for business practices in the geospatial industry and their usefulness for solving business problems and making well informed decisions. The project appears to be a useful tool in teaching process and studying as it gives the student san opportunity to learn how to monitor and evaluate the transformation processes of the global geodetic organizations and of the business practices in large, medium and small, private and public companies by analysing the stakeholders working in various fields of geodesy, geoinformatics and the spatial dana industry, from inland and abroad. By doing so the students are also given an opportunity to learn how to do their own study of stakeholders in the geospatial industry which seems to be increasingly demanded by the market.

Teaching Methods, Engineers, Learning Outcomes, Digital Learning, Stakeholders, Geospatial Industry.

Ovaj rad je rezultat aktivnosti u okviru znanstveno-nastavnog projekta „Profil dionika u geodeziji“ autorice i voditeljice projekta prof. dr. sc. Branka Mraović, a vezano za Programske ugovore Sveučilišta u Zagrebu sa Ministarstvom znanosti, obrazovanja i športa RH za ak. god. 2012./2013. i 2013./2014.