The University of Lviv has launched the third stage of the quadripartite international project “Materials Science Ma(s)ters – developing a new master’s degree” within the framework of the ERASMUS+ programme (KA220 HED), co-implemented by teachers and researchers from the University’s Faculty of Chemistry and colleagues from Poland, Slovakia and Turkey. On 15-19 January 2024, a regular study visit to the University of Zilina (Slovakia) took place. The Ukrainian side was represented by the project leader, Professor Lidia Boichyshyn of the Department of Physical and Colloidal Chemistry, Senior Researchers Iryna Marchuk and Yuliia Horbenko of the same department, and Associate Professors Oksana Zelinska and Oksana Zaremba of the Department of Inorganic Chemistry.
The programme of the week-long visit was full of various educational events and informative excursions. During the seminars and workshops, the partners shared their best practices in the field of didactics and methods of teaching materials science and related disciplines, experience in the use of modern information and communication technologies in the educational process, including the open learning management system Moodle, neural networks (GPT, Perplexity, etc.), and discussed the main aspects of the implementation of the future master’s programme. During the visit, Iryna Marchuk presented a quality assurance report on the project, which was based on the collection and analysis of feedback from project partners on the quantitative and qualitative assessment of individual study visit activities and results achieved.
The participants of the international meeting had the opportunity to visit the university library, the exposition of interactive demonstrations of wave processes “Land of Waves”, as well as to get acquainted with the laboratories of non-destructive methods of materials research and chemical analysis of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Žilina. The highlight of the study visit was an excursion to the Korean automotive company KIA Motors Slovakia, which has been operating in the vicinity of Žilina since 2006. The scientists had the opportunity to see how knowledge in the field of materials science combined with modern technologies is used in large-scale production. The visit confirmed the importance of cooperation between the university and industry.
The project participants returned with a valuable experience that will certainly enrich the materials science curriculum and become a platform for building and strengthening international cooperation.