The Paris Agreement of 2015 set goals to achieve a worldwide sustainable future. Since then, a lot has been done and a lot has failed too. Education is one of the forgotten tools to reach these objectives. The EU launched Erasmus+, a program for education, training, youth and sport.

This study presents the results of 3 courses teaching building Energy Performance Certification (EPC) to worldwide students inside an EU Erasmus Mundus Joint Master in Smart Cities and Communities (SMACCs). This Higher Education degree is a 2-year 120 ECTS Master’s Degree, to teach the next generation of engineers and scientists. The best students apply for competitive scholarships that allow them to dive into integrative and transversal education for 2 years in Europe.

Around 30 students from Africa, Asia, South America and Europe have attended this elective subject over these 3 years. Interestingly, in some courses, these students were merged with a group of local Spanish students at another University Master’s degree.

The subject is divided into two modules of 15 hours each, Energy Audits and Energy Certification. This work focuses on the latter, which teaches the EPC concepts through practical cases and reviews. The study analyses the teaching-learning methods, the project-case definitions, evaluation methods and their development along these 3 courses.

The results discussion starts by evaluating the teaching-learning methods, comparing the planning and the final timing, the task objectives and scopes. For instance, in the first two courses, the EPC calculation tool was mainly numerical, with little graphical input.

Furthermore, the project-case definitions are compared. In the first two courses, the data on buildings was given from scratch, such as floor plans, construction components, energy systems, etc. In the last course, the building models were given directly and the students had to review and edit them, if necessary.

Regarding the evaluation methods, the task assessments also evolved from a more numerical goal comparison to a more open evaluation, to adapt to the new building models. In both situations, marks are presented in % and comprehensive feedback was given to point out the issues and achievements of each task, to improve the modelling, calculations, reporting, etc.

To complement this, the students' task scores and the most common mistakes are studied. A general look into their classification and frequency shows which ones are the most common issues to understand in depth EPC geometry, component definition, sizing, interpretation of KPI, and reporting. The average course scores varied from 73.6% to 67.5% and lately to 69.6%.

Finally, the students' satisfaction surveys about these classes are compared among them and to the global ones of this SMACCs Master’s degree. The students satisfaction with these courses improved over these years from 4,5 to 4,8 and 5,0 over 5.

To conclude, the lessons learnt are highlighted and the future course plan is outlined. This study presents useful results of how to use practical tasks, adapting the cases and evaluation methods to their backgrounds. It is an example of how to coordinate these aspects, despite some difficulties like having worldwide students with very different bachelor studies, or using EPC tools in Spanish and local EPCs models. Overall, it also proves that with a proper trial-error-improvement approach, students can learn and be very satisfied with the process.

Keywords: Energy Certification, Energy Performance, EPC, Erasmus+, Decarbonization.