Lab e·nov™, IFP School's digital cultures laboratory, is bubbling with energy.
Since it opened in March 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the Lab has multiplied its achievements to help promote and support pedagogical and innovation initiatives at IFP School.
A virtual reality module on the battery pack, video clips on the energy transition or on hydrogen technologies applied to heavy mobility... Here are the latest achievements of the Lab e·nov™, IFP School's digital cultures laboratory, is bubbling with energy, all illustrations, if proof were needed, of its buoyant activity.
"Lab e·nov™ is a place where we can collectively reflect on educational innovation. It's a space dedicated to learning and experimenting with new learning methodologies," explains Olivier Bernaert, Head of the structure.
"We are committed to reinventing our pedagogical approaches to help students develop their skill set," he adds.
The laboratory supports the transformation of teaching and digital practices at IFP School. Its mission is twofold: to create a dynamic trend of pedagogical innovations within the School, and to help our training programs evolve.
Lab e·nov™ generates ideas based on the needs of lecturers, research-lecturers, students and partner companies. It then assists the project’s leader in defining the project, from its conception to the testing and implementation phases.
Behind the scenes, we regularly hear terms like Serious Games, Design Thinking, Agile Methods and Immersive Reality. Here, it's all about mobilizing knowledge and know-how, identifying trends, sharing expertise and enriching teaching methods to improve learning outcomes and boost student success.
Four areas are explored in particular:
- educational innovation,
- immersive realities,
- MOOCs and SPOCs,
- entrepreneurship.
Located on the fourth floor of the Tamaris building since August 2021, the laboratory boasts impressive premises, housing a multimedia studio, a virtual reality laboratory, two active learning rooms, two offices and a shared space. It recently added a 3D printing club, run by the School’s students.
At the beginning of May, the Lab e·novTM team was strengthened with the arrival of Jérémy Demolliens, the new Head of the Immersive Realities Hub.
A graduate in Digital Entrepreneurial Management, Digital Communication and Media from the “Institut de Création et Animation Numérique” (ICAN), Jérémy previously designed immersive training courses for the Uptale platform.
A game and level design enthusiast, his ambition is to develop Lab e·nov™'s range of immersive experiences, and to enhance the students' autonomy in using the virtual reality laboratory.
"I'd like to offer a wide range of diverse immersive experiences, motivate the troops and awaken minds," emphasizes Jérémy.
"The School is a dynamic environment, where teachers, students, IFPEN researchers and industrialists come together. We have the opportunity to tackle exciting subjects using virtual reality technologies," he continues.
It's now our turn to immerse ourselves in the Lab e·novTM and discover its latest innovations.
Continuously reinventing our teaching methods
Always on the lookout for new ways to teach and learn, Lab e·novTM’s team helped two students from the Processes and Polymers program to organize a 3D printing hackathon for their fellow students.
Guillaume Landry and Nicolas Sappey challenged their peers to design a puzzle piece in one day, using a combination of modelling and 3D printing to train their classmates in prototyping.
Virtual training too
The fields where virtual reality can be applied are multiplying in the Energy and Mobility sectors, and new skills are being required. To better prepare IFP School’s students, Lab e·nov™'s Immersive Realities Hub closely monitors the market to see how virtual reality technologies are evolving.
It designs immersive experiences based on teaching needs and ensures they are in sync with industry’s current issues. These virtual devices help students discover professional environments and hone their technical skills in a work environment.
"The virtual space allows us to effectively and safely train students before they go out into the field," notes Jérémy Demolliens.
"By immersing themselves in the virtual environment, students will acquire the skills they need to perform their jobs and to get to grips with their future work environment," he adds.
Starting up an industrial pump or assembling an electric engine... everything becomes possible virtually, without having to deal with safety or electrical clearance issues. In fact, students in the Powertrain Engineering (PWT) and Energy and Products (PRO) programs recently donned their virtual reality headsets to examine the integration of a battery pack in an electric vehicle. The virtual reality experience was developed by Alessio Dulbecco, El Hadj Miliani and Ludivine Pidol, lecturers at IFP School's Powertrains and Sustainable Mobility center, in collaboration with Lab e·nov™’s teams.
"During their immersion, our students learn to analyze and understand how a battery pack works, to identify its various components and to assemble all these elements according to the imposed specifications," explains Alessio.
Egor Glushkov, a student at the IT Engineering School of Marseille (École d'ingénierie informatique de Marseille - ISEN) doing his internship at Lab e·nov™, is currently working on the development of a new virtual reality module. The aim: re-assembling a single-cylinder combustion engine.
Supervised by Jérémy Demolliens, Egor first filmed IFPEN technicians at work. Using a 3D model produced by IFPEN's CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software, he then reproduced the entire structure and environment in 3D.
"The module will have two stages: the first stage will allow students to learn to identify all the various parts, and the second stage, to actually assemble the engine," explains Egor.
This module will complete the practical work that the Center's students carry out at the beginning of their studies at the French National Automotive Training Group (Groupement National pour la Formation Automobile - GNFA).
Tailor-made online courses
A growing number of companies in the Energy sector are calling on Lab e·nov™ to enhance their professional training offer. To expand its SPOC (Small Private Online Course) offering, the laboratory has signed an agreement with IFP Training on the co-production of tailor-made courses. Since 2020, it has created various hybrid training courses for customers such as Axens, Ecopetrol, FEV and Schneider Electric. Initially based on the School’s flagship Energy Transition MOOC, the courses are then tailored to the customer’s needs by adding webinars presented by IFPEN experts, IFP School or IFP Training personnel or even by the customers themselves. The rate of certified learners varies between 75 and 96%!
"Our courses focus on engaging and uniting learners," notes Marie de la Villèsbrunne, Head of the MOOCs and SPOCs Hub.
The latest SPOC commissioned by Axens is on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
"We see ourselves as part of a virtuous circle: requests from companies must be linked to the fields addressed by the School, as they will help us enrich the teaching we provide; and vice-versa, companies are attracted by the potential applications of our teaching tools," explains Olivier Bernaert.
As far as MOOCs are concerned, the latest one offered by Lab e·nov™, and co-produced with IFP Training, is devoted to Hydrogen Production, with the participation of IFPEN researchers. It was followed by students in the Gas, Hydrogen and Electricity option of the Energy and Processes program (ENEP). The team is now preparing to open it to the general public!
Design thinking to enhance training engineering
At the request of IFP School's Georesources & Energy and Energy Economics & Management Centers, Lab e·nov™'s Entrepreneurship division led a series of design thinking workshops on the creation of new low-carbon training courses.
What about tomorrow?
Lab e·nov™ plans to open a branch on the IFPEN-Lyon site to serve researchers, PhD students and, more generally, IFPEN staff. In fact, the team has already visited the site to run a workshop around the multimedia studio, allowing videos to be recorded in real-time to meet employees' communication needs (pitch for projects, the “My PhD topic in 3 minutes” (Ma thèse en 3 minutes) competition, tutorials to learn how to use the tools deployed, etc.). This new modular space should soon be operational. It will allow different types of workshops to be run: creativity sessions, podcast recordings, virtual reality sessions or video shootings... There's always something going on at Lab e·nov™!
Article written by Meyling Siu