Project oriented international engineering education

Engineering education has to meet the demands of industry. International orientation, specialised knowledge and the so called key competencies have to be taught during the studies. This paper describes the effectiveness of international project oriented education in modem teaching. Real international orientation is very difficult because of the long distances which are to bridge. To this end a new approach called Virtual International Project Oriented University (VIPOU) was developed under the guidance of the Fachhochschule Mannheim - Mannheim University of Applied Sciences and several partners From industry and higher education. As the following description of this project-oriented virtual university indicates, by introducing new methods of teaming, such an approach can improve the education of students and, at the same time, the quality of the teaching profession.