To create more equitable engineering education, it is essential to understand the adversity faced by students due to their socio-economic status; the impact it has on their academic journey, and how to adapt to overcome it. An aim of the EUniWell "Maximising Academic and Social Outcomes in Engineering Education" (MASOEE) project is to understand student disadvantage and its effect on engineering skill and identity development across 3 European universities. This multiphase, mixed-method research explored the association between adversity through parental education and adaptability through academic self-concept, utilising data from a structured questionnaire and 1-to-1 interviews. We found that students who are first generation in their family to attend university is a common indicator of adversity, and that, on average, their self-concept specific academic skills – communication, networking, and entrepreneurial resourcefulness – is lower compared to other students. The thematic analysis of the 1-to-1 interviews reveals 5 recurrent themes when discussing academic resilience and success with students: social factors, networking, extra-curricular skills development, skill confidence and improvement, and engineering identity fluidity. The findings add to previous research, and the need to develop targeted interventions around these uncovered themes.

To create more equitable engineering education, it is essential to understand the adversity faced by students due to their socio-economic status; the impact it has on their academic journey, and how to adapt to overcome it. An aim of the EUniWell "Maximising Academic and Social Outcomes in Engineering Education" (MASOEE) project is to understand student disadvantage and its effect on engineering skill and identity development across 3 European universities. This multiphase, mixed-method research explored the association between adversity through parental education and adaptability through academic self-concept, utilising data from a structured questionnaire and 1-to-1 interviews. We found that students who are first generation in their family to attend university is a common indicator of adversity, and that, on average, their self-concept specific academic skills - communication, networking, and entrepreneurial resourcefulness - is lower compared to other students. The thematic analysis of the 1-to-1 interviews reveals 5 recurrent themes when discussing academic resilience and success with students: social factors, networking, extra-curricular skills development, skill confidence and improvement, and engineering identity fluidity. The findings add to previous research, and the need to develop targeted interventions around these uncovered themes.

The ERASMUS+ European University for Well-Being (EUniWell) alliance’s mission aims to resolve the paradox of Europeans’ relative prosperity against the global security and sustainability challenge. “Maximising Academic and Social Outcomes in Engineering Education” is a project which interprets this contradiction for engineering educators; how to best teach non-technical skills to ensure engineers make the utmost contribution to societal wellbeing? Appreciably, the social outcome for the person who becomes an engineer is positive because the profession is relatively well-paid. Therefore, engineering education is good for social mobility providing the learning environment narrows attainment gaps between disadvantaged and mainstream cohorts. Accordingly, our strategy is to bring together the expertise of the British, French, Italian and Swedish faculties to transfer best practice for professional, business and sustainability skill teaching, while contrasting how their disadvantaged cohorts present. The project has two primary objectives: To understand how partners differ in terms of skill teaching, and how students from disadvantaged backgrounds are accommodated. The paper describes the background and rationale of the project, and its research design and methodology. Although the project is still in progress and data collection is still underway, this paper provides insights and perspectives for engineering educators looking to design similar collaborations to share best practice, while considering engineering identities and their underlying competencies. 

The MASOEE project brings together engineering faculties in the EUniWell alliance to share best practices for teaching transversal skills so that engineers contribute to societal well-being. The study combines the expertise of several engineering faculties at European universities. It focuses on sharing and developing expertise to improve the social outcomes of engineering students. Namely, researchers examine the similarities and differences between partners regarding their student bodies, teaching, programme structures, and institutions’ culture. Moreover, the work also explores how transversal skills are taught, what student attitudes are in terms of learning these skills, and how educators can better teach them.

The research design includes several activities across four work packages (WPs). To ensure that partners use the same skill descriptions, we use well-established organizations' existing definitions. WP1 strives to identify best practices within EUniWell based on the 15 entrepreneurial competencies defined in EU EntreComp Framework. WP2 targets engineering students' ability to solve complex challenges, communication, and networking skills defined in the "21st century skills" by the World Economic Forum. WP3 investigates the engineering schools’ capacity to train engineering students in sustainable competence, forming responsible engineers capable of developing sustainable solutions using the skills defined by the EU GreenComp. WP4 supports the other packages with engineering education research, specifically data collection and analysis, knowledge forming, and evaluation. The project runs from August 2022 until September 2023.  

The MASOEE project partners gather knowledge within their organisations through joint surveys and focus groups and collectively identify and share best practices. The engineering identity, taught as transversal skills by participating partners, can evolve from a traditional technologist identity along three paths: the self-made engineer, the progressive technologist, and the responsible engineer. By sharing best practices for teaching these skills, we believe we will better understand what the future engineer - who integrates all three identities – will be.

There is a notable discrepancy between the relative prosperity of Europeans and the global security and sustainability challenge. The mission of the ERASMUS+ 2020 European University for Well-Being (EUniWell) alliance is to address this. Our project, “Maximizing Academic and Social Outcomes in Engineering Education” (MASOEE) interprets this contradiction for engineering educators, exploring how to ensure graduates make the utmost contribution to societal wellbeing by narrowing attainment gaps. We are combining the expertise of British, French, Italian, and Swedish faculties to identify, share, and ultimately transfer best practices for professional, business, and sustainability skill teaching that is aligned to the EU competency frameworks including EntreComp (Bacigalupo et al. 2016) and GreenComp (Bianchi, Pisiotis, and Cabrera Giraldez 2022). Furthermore, we are finding out how disadvantaged cohorts in each partner faculty are characterized and supported. The project is guided by the following research questions:

• What are the similarities and differences between our students, staff, teaching, and culture?
• How are skills taught and embedded in programmes? What are student attitudes to learning these? How do we currently define and measure social outcomes?
• Which new approaches can we employ improve social and academic outcomes?

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VATTEN ÄR DET VIKTIGASTE SOM FINNS

För utan vatten – inget liv. Inga växter. Inga djur. Inga människor. Och absolut inga fiskar.

Men som tur är finns vatten nästan överallt. Som moln i luften. Som regn. Som snöflingor som singlar ner. I bäckar, åar, floder, sjöar. På marken som dagg. I marken. I trädens löv. Men allra mest vatten är det i de väldiga haven. Ja, man kan säga att vatten är liv.

Därför ska vi vara rädda om vattnet.Inte slösa med det! Inte smutsa ner det! VI SKA AKTA VATTNET! I den här boken får du lära dig en massa häpnadsväckande fakta om vatten. Men inte bara det. Här finns ocksåmånga spännande vattenexperiment.

Dricksvatten är vårt viktigaste livsmedel men detta rena vatten används även för bevattningsändamål, i vårt avloppssystem och inom industrin. Våra samlade vattenresurser ger dessutom ekosystemtjänster i form av fiske, rekreationsvärde m.m. (Bergek m. fl., 2017). Trots att Sverige är ett mycket vattenrikt land sett ur ett internationellt perspektiv har vattenbrist uppstått i flera delar av landet under senare år. Vidare förväntas pågående och kommande klimatförändringar, befolkningstillväxt och urbanisering påverka vattenkvaliteten negativt samt öka konkurrensen om vatten ytterligare (IPCC, 2014; SMHI, 2020a). Med ökad konkurrens uppstår dessutom målkonflikter mellan olika viktiga samhällsfunktioner. Det finns således ett stort behov av tvärsektoriell forskning samt policyutveckling för att säkerställa en hållbar framtida vattenförsörjning.

Denna rapport syftar till att sammanställa kunskapsläget vad gäller förutsättningarna för en hållbar vattenförsörjning i Kronobergs län. Först beskrivs tillgång och uttag av dricksvatten i Kronoberg i jämförelse med Kalmar och Skåne län samt förutsättningarna för god framtida vattenkvalitet med Bolmen som exempel. Därefter fokuserar vi på de målkonflikter som kan förväntas uppstå kring dricksvattnet och diskuterar slutligen de kunskapsluckor samt det behov av tvärsektoriell forskning och samhällsutveckling som behövs för en hållbar vattenförsörjning.

The increasing world population and climate change are major concerns for the supply of water needs. Understanding user behavior facilitates the development of effective strategies of domestic water management. This research applied a questionnaire survey and data analysis methods to analyze the water consumption behavior of tenants in a multicultural urban area, dominated by immigrants of different ethnic origins, in the city of Växjö in Sweden. Results showed that the majority of the studied participants perceived themselves to be environmentally friendly. They reported to be engaged in water conservation activities quite often, but analysis showed that they did not have accurate perceptions of their water consumption. Positive attitudes towards water conservation and self-reported water conservation activities significantly but negatively influenced respondents’ actual water consumption, i.e., water consumption was higher. Subjective norms did not have a significant influence. The results also revealed that individual measurement and debit positively influenced, i.e., reduced, actual water consumption. Therefore, water management systems should include an individual measurement and debit system combined with a visualization system to enable tenants to monitor the quantity and cost of their water consumption.

Purpose The MBBR solution has been applied for the textile wastewater treatment. However, in order to develop cost-effectivesolutions, waste biomass can be used as carrier. Rice husks are agricultural waste which have been used as an adsorbent of dyes;besides, they can provide and sustain suitable microorganism communities for the degradation of dyes. This study aimed toevaluate the biodegradation of the azo dye Direct Red 75 in two treatment systems with different carriers.Methods Bioreactor Awas composed by an anaerobic bioreactor filled with Kaldnes K1 carriers employed in the MBBR technologyand the study was performed in 2 different temperatures, 30 ± 0.5 °C and 21 ± 2 °C. Biofilter B was composed by a sequencedanaerobic-aerobic system with rice husks as carriers and this study was performed at 21 ± 2 °C. The rice husks was also employed asa source of microorganisms in both systems. Decolourization, surface area of the carriers and other parameters were analysed.Results Biofilter B showed high rates of decolorization, mainly over 90% in all HRT tested (24, 48 and 12 h), presenting itself asa stable system, whereas Bioreactors A showed better performances with 48 h of HRT, about 85%for A at 30 ± 0.5 °C and 45%at21 ± 2 °C. With a similar amount of carriers, analyses showed that rice husks had a much larger surface for microorganisms togrow on than Kaldnes K1.Conclusion The Biofilter B is a worthwhile system to be investigated and applied for the decolourization of textile wastewatertreatment; for instance, in developing countries.