Hej Everyone,
Now that I’ve had my courses for a week now, I just give you guys a update on what I experienced. This will be part one of a three part report I want to do on studying here in Denmark. Part two will be for the middle of the courses and part three will be for my ending conclusions.
I guess I’ll start with what I’m doing, so from my introduction you know that I’m Mechanical Engineering in Centennial College and I am actually doing the same over here, as a semester 4 University Student but there are some courses which are 5th and 6th semester so I pretty evenly layered with what I would have been doing back home.
These are the courses I am taking
Project Management X-PMA1
What I learn in this course:
– Develop teamwork in working groups
– Behave and act as a team player.
– Do a formulation of the company’s: Mission, goals and strategy.
– Assess the basis organisation and a project organisation in a company.
– Behave and act as a project manager
– Analyse a project and its elements
– Do planning and description of a project.
– Identify and implement the four aspects of a project: The technical, the organisational, the business and the political aspects
– Make the main plan of a project.
– Do detail planning and follow-up in Gantt, Network and PMS.
– Do the budgeting and follow up as a part of project management.
– Do project risk management
– Do successive calculation of the budget and schedule
– Use a contract concept for buying in projects
My Initial Review: Really nice teacher with a lot of industry background, we started the class by the teacher introducing himself and then we introduced ourselves, after we learned about some HR techniques about talking to employees for different situations and then we got into our groups to do some problem solving for the discussed situations.
Project Supervision X-P-ME2
What I learn in this course:
– Project work, focused around automation, renewable energy, mechanical design, robotics or other areas
– Project analysis, problem formulation, idea generation, concept development, design, documentation and assessment
– Project planning/Project management
– Exercises with Pro/Engineer and Pro/Mechanica
– Exercises with Pro/PDM Link and Pro/Project Link
– Exercises with ANSYS Classic and ANSYS Workbench
– Exercises with Rapid Prototyping and Material Testing
– Evaluation of analytical results
– Study independently
My Initial Review: The first class we actually got into our groups for the semester and decided on a project, the there was 3 groups made(some people were missing that day) and there was 5 projects offered. The rule was there was only 1 international student allowed in each group so I joined a group with 4 Danes, I didn’t like any of the projects offered so one of my group members made a call to local ship engineering firm and I can’t believe how open companies are to helping students. They actually gave us a project! Our mission is to see if a curved rudder design will improve efficiency within a ship’s design. This specific firm is designing two of the largest ships in the world and we are going to be a part of that(this blows my mind). By a stroke of luck, there is a testing basin for similar design that we can use in our university and there is a 3D printer(actually two) that we can use to model the design. So I have really have high hopes for this project.
Part 2 of this class
FEA/FEM: Finite Element in Engineering, in layman’s terms: We use computer to model designs and get information. Simple example, if we push this button 1000 times, how hot will it get and when will it break. A computer can this without actually having to do it, but there is a slight margin of approximation.
Above is some FEA stuff.
Internal Combustion Engines(ICE) X-ICE1
What I learn in this course:
– The kinematics of the ICE
– The thermodynamic basics of the ICE
– The layout of the ICE (bore and stroke)
– Ignition and controlling of the combustion within the ICE
– Injection of the fuel
– Reduction of pollution from the ICE
– The gas dynamics within the ICE
– Turbo- or supercharging of the ICE
– Dimensioning of the parts within the ICE
– Lubrication of the ICE
– Cooling of the ICE
– Vibration phenomena within the ICE
My Initial Review: If you’ve been following my posts until now, you know how much I love cars, so this course for me is AMAZING. The teacher is really cool and we were talking about Carburetors, Fuel Injection and GDI on the first day. I hope I learn everything I can from this course and apply it wherever I can, this is one course I can’t wait to have every week.
Structural Vibrations X-VIB1
What I learn in this course:
– Establish the governing differential equations of the analysed system (Newton’s second law of motion, Lagrange equation etc.)
– Stiffness and flexibility matrices
– Modal matrices
– Damping of vibrating systems
– Transverse, longitudinal and torsional vibration
My Initial Review: This is probably going to be the most challenging course I have, I actually knew that even before I came as I heard how hard it was going to be but I need this course in order to achieve a certain skill requirement so I will put as much effort and time as it requires. We received a problem the first day(two days ago) and I am still thinking about how to solve that problem, tomorrow is Sunday and I have arranged for a study group to tackle the problems our teacher has given us.
Study Customs in Denmark:
- We refer and address the teacher by their first names and no title is given.
- Classes here are 3.5 hours long, we take 10 minute breaks every 1 hour
- Eating is allowed, now eating something small and drinking water may be allowed in some of your classes but over here it’s very different. I have seen students actually bring a two or three course meal to class, complete with condiments and drinks(coffee or soda)
- There is in-class work for all classes, it could be a presentation, group assignment or individual questions but there is always some time at the end of the class to do work.
Differences I’ve seen:
These are not really customs but it’s something I’ve seen differ from education back in Canada.
- Students here are of all age groups, it seems to be a normal trend that you don’t have to directly go to post secondary institution after completing high school, you can work for some time and then go and you can change carrier paths and go again. I guess it’s not hard if your being paid to go to school.
- There seems to be, especially in my circle of friends that do a graduate or doctoral level in their field. I have very few friends in North America that are even considering this, I think for us it has to come with some financial reward but in Denmark I people just love to learn and can do it without any major financial difficulties.
Apologies for the long post, but this was one of the more important ones.
Take Care!
Written by: Hamza N.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that with our team projects, we get our own room with a code that we can only open, I thought this was quite amazing to say the least. My group members are bringing things like coffee makers and a microwave so we can work productively and even live there because the whole school stays open 24/7…but I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that.
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