The 5th RiFLE meeting took place in Rome on 27 September 2012. It was chaired by Dr Marin Marinov who presented an overview of the project. He confirmed the high interest in the project by many companies working in transport and logistics sector and thanked the consortium for the joint efforts in project development. The good news announced was about the high assessment of European Commission that might invite the team to talk about RiFLE to other coordinators.

Dr Marin Marinov informed the team members that WP3 and WP5 had been fully completed and WP6 and WP7 would be finished by the end of November. He delivered a presentation linked to task 6.4: Summary of the curricula. For the time-being, the 4 curricula are intended only for the participating higher education institutions (HEI). He underlined that the programme delivered at Newcastle University would be research-based. The international students could come to Newcastle for an intensive week to gain knowledge and experience but there is no provided mobility for teachers.

The progress of work on WP4 was reported by Prof. Jörn Schlingensiepen in his presentation on simulation modelling of the curriculum and explained how the system had been designed and how it worked. The conclusion was that this software would demonstrate the potential of the project.

Dr Luca Rizzetto delivered a presentation on the curricula validation and shared a plan for the validation workshop. He showed drafts of two questionnaires prepared for the workshop’s participants. After a short discussion, the final version of the questionnaire was designed by the team.

Dr Marin Marinov explained that the 3rd year of the RiFLE project would be focused on validation activities. He talked about WP8 Exploitation and Implementation and suggested that Prof. Jörn Schlingensiepen and Anna Fraszczyk might work together on D8.3, which includes e-learning tools.

Consortium meeting I N S I D E T H I S I S SU E :

Consortium meeting 1

Validation workshop 2

RiFLE student mobility 3

RiFLE Students in

Ingolstadt

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Next Steps: Meeting in Sofia 3

RiFLE is a new CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT project funded under the ERASMUS Programme of the European

Commission. This project began on 1 October 2010 and will run for three years.

Newsletter # 5, Winter 2013

Dr Marin Marinov introduced the idea of student mobility within RiFLE project, which will be tested in 2013. Each partner will recruit one MSc student who will visit the other three universities and join RailNewcastle summer school for 2 weeks (24/06-5/07/13). The students will be working on their major projects (MSc thesis) while abroad. Joined supervision will be tested with 2 supervisors and 2 advisers for each project. Travel costs and accommodation for students should be covered by the project. WP8 will be discussed in more details at the consortium meeting in Sofia on 21-22 March 2013.

Concerning WP9, Prof. Jörn Schlingensiepen and Dr Luca Rizzetto were encouraged to publish new papers related to their deliverables, especially on the validation activities. Dr Luca Rizzetto mentioned some potential journals, which could be targeted, and presented the local La Sapienza transport journal.

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RiFLE is a new CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT project funded under the ERASMUS Programme of the European

Commission. This project began on 1 October 2010 and will run for three years.

And to propose possible improvements to the programme. Moreover the participants were asked to get an additional “stick it” notes exercise in order to highlight their main observations.

In addition, at the end of the Workshop all participants shared their thoughts regarding the RiFLE project with everyone one by one.

This validation highlighted that there is a real need for this sort of course in terms of content, level and grading. The programme will need to be “sold” to students but could be a very attractive option and fulfil a real industry requirement.

In general, stakeholders judged the RiFLE programme is clearly structured, very comprehensive in the field of rail freight and logistics and well balanced among and economics subjects in order to provide an opportunity for employers to have staff who have a good engineering balance of technical and business/commercial skills.

The RiFLE consortium worked with over 30 external experts to validate the developed curricula on rail freight and logistics against both the European Educational Standards for Master programmes and Industry requirements.

Validation against Industry requirements has been achieved through a Validation of Curricula Workshop that was held on 28th September 2012 in Rome, at the Faculty of Engineering of the University “La Sapienza”.

The participants to the Workshop were 23, representing the Consortium partners, other Academic Institutions, Research Centres and Companies active in the Rail and Logistic sectors.

During the Workshop the RiFLE team presented the main results of the project and in particular the developed curricula and collected suggestions for improvements and/or adjustments from the participant Stakeholders. The validation itself consisted in the distribution of a questionnaire, through which all participants were able to express their judgments on the developed curricula and to suggest possible improvements. In particular through this questionnaire the stakeholders will be able to judge different aspects of the developed curricula as follows:

• comprehensiveness of programme contents;

• adequacy to Industry needs;

• mobility pattern.

Newsletter # 5, Winter 2013

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Validation workshop

Another interesting suggestion was to relate each stream of curricula to a set of possible jobs in rail company and to provide a short description of career development to potential students.

Finally, the main issues to be solved are the ones related to student mobility and its funding.

Not every student is willing to study abroad (especially in the United Kingdom) and have the finances to do it. Moreover language and cultural barriers may need to be overcome.

On the other hand, the level of mobility may play the role of “attractor” for studying rail programme and for working with passion in the rail field. Students would have a chance to compare different academic institutions, cultures, interests, rail administrations, rail authorities.

Therefore, in order to solve the student mobility issue, RiFLE team should manage carefully various aspects: Erasmus Agreements between partner

They appreciated the innovativeness and the multidisciplinary approach of the project and judge RiFLE MSc a valuable and worthwhile programme, which has considerable potential to be very attractive to a significant pool of students and companies.

Regarding other Subjects the Programme should include, participants suggested minor integrations. On their opinion courses should deal also with the topics as follows: interoperability, EU policy impact, situation developments in non-EU Countries, intermodality and multimodality, track access charges.

institutions, funding, language, cultural and practical issues (e.g. accommodation) and information to prospective students.

RiFLE is a new CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT project funded under the ERASMUS Programme of the European

Commission. This project began on 1 October 2010 and will run for three years.

Newsletter # 5, Winter 2013

Four Master students representing four RiFLE partners have been selected to take part in RiFLE student mobility. The lucky students are:

Loris Mazzevilla: a student in the MSc course in Transport Systems Engineering at the University of Rome “Sapienza”;

Daniel Pyrcherer: a student in the MSc course in Technical Procurement Management at the University of Applied Sciences in Ingolstadt;

Tino Nikolov: a student in the MSc course in Technology and Management of Transport at the Todor Kableshkov Higher School of Transport in Sofia;

Marcus Wake: a student in the MSc course in Low Carbon Transport Engineering at the University of Newcastle.

They are expected to work on their Master theses related to rail and logistics under joint supervision of two professors representing two of the participating Higher Education Institutions. In addition, the RiFLE student mobility activities include:

1. A week in Ingolstadt, Germany (11-15/02/2013): logistics game activity, technical visit to Audi factory;

2. A week in Sofia, Bulgaria (18-22/03/2013): two technical visits to a train traffic control centre and a marshaling yard; a lecture on Distribution system modeling with min cost network algorithms; participation in the a workshop on the RiFLE project and meeting with the consortium partners;

3. A week in Rome, Italy (8-12/04/2013): lectures on Rail Passenger and Freight Terminals and Freight Transport and Logistics, two technical visits;

4. Two weeks in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK (23/06-5/07/2013): participation in RailNewcastle Intensive Programme in Rail and Logistics; team work on research projects and two technical visits to Tyne and Wear Metro Depot and National Railway Museum in York.

The aims of the RiFLE student mobility are to explore innovative learning means (e.g. blended learning) and to demonstrate the mobility patterns of students. The outcomes of this activity will feed into findings of WP8 on

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RiFLE student mobility

RiFLE Students in Ingolstadt

Next Steps : Meeting in Sofia

As planned, the first week of Rifle mobility for

students was organized in Ingolstadt, Germany. On

13 February 2012 they visited AUDI plant where a

number of interesting facts about rail freight and

logistic were presented to them:

• there are 12 block trains a day;

• the income transport consists mainly of gear

boxes and engines;

• outgoings are up to 200 cars per train;

• 70% of all cars leave the plant by train.

The 6th RiFLE consortium meeting will be held in Sofia on 21-22 March 2013. The topics to be discussed include:

RiFLE Overview

D8.3: Innovation via Distance/E-/Bended Learning

WP8: Joint degrees

WP8: Technical memorandum

WP8: Demonstration: Students Mobility

• The consortium members will meet the RiFLE students who will be in Sofia during the period 18-22 March 2013.

WP9: Dissemination activities

• Handbook

Final conference: Newcastle, 19/09/2013.