IOT-OPEN.EU project is aimed at bridging the gap between what higher education offers and what the European labor market needs in the field of Internet of Things - one of the most fast growing and promising areas in the world of information and communication technologies. The European Commission has recently announced the Internet of Things to be one of its flagships for growth and for the Digital Single Market, because it has the potential to enhance Europe's competitiveness, and is considered to be an important driver for the development of an information-based economy and society. However, there are still no efficient instruments available for the emerging Internet of Things industry to inform higher education institutions about its needs and expectations regarding the learning outcomes, while a large number of well-trained professionals in the field of the Internet of Things is an essential requirement for a secure, safe and privacy preserving deployment of this spectrum of technologies in Europe. The IOT-OPEN.EU project offers students and teachers an array of possibilities to discover how digitalisation of education can bring significant quality improvements and make learning outcomes more relevant to the labour market needs. The project introduces virtual remote laboratories and open e-learning materials within one innovative multidisciplinary teaching module on the Internet of Things. It will allow students from Bachelor’s to Master’s levels and adult learners to experience capabilities of the Internet of Things devices both in theory and in practice. Via the remote online laboratory, students will get access to various hardware and smart devices connected to one another across different European universities and powered by intelligence to deliver new services and applications. E-learning materials will provide free access to Internet of Things education for everyone, regardless of geographical location, gender, financial or social status. Standardisation of the Internet of Things teaching module will make it easy to introduce it into curricula of educational institutions across Europe, opening up the Internet of Things career prospects to thousands of people - professionals, VET students, technology geeks, secondary school pupils and university students. The educational module produced as a part of IOT-OPEN.EU project will be developed and delivered in close cooperation with the Internet of Things industry representatives, involving dozens of tech companies into the preparation of the teaching materials and their validation. An External Advisory Board comprised of the Internet of Things, electronics and embedded systems SMEs will provide regular feedback to the partnership in order to efficiently juxtapose industry needs on transnational level and compare them to the current educational offer. As a result of the project, the European Internet of Things industry will benefit, as the teaching module will tailor the learning outcomes to the industry needs, improve qualifications of engineers, supplying labour market with better specialists. The project will also have significant impact on the quality of education in Europe, introducing innovative digital learning instruments.
IOT-OPEN.EU project was aimed at the proposal stage as a way of bridging the gap between what higher education offers and what the European labour market needs in the field of Internet of Things. This was expected through implementing a number of resources and tools for higher education, for various study levels, also for a general audience and industrial professionals. Our objectives also include setting up new cooperation team for IoT on the European level, introducing European collaboration spirit for a non-EU partner: ITMO from Russia and update HE curriculums with high-quality modules. IOT-OPEN.EU consortium is composed of 5 academic bodies and one commercial company. Those are Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland (project coordinator); Riga Technical University, Riga, Latvia; Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia; University of Messina, Messina, Italy; ITMO University, St. Petersburg, Russia and ITT Group, Tallinn, Estonia. IOT-OPEN.EU delivers content for classical IOT courses held at the universities or companies, MOOC online courses available through the web and provides access to the physical devices so-called VREL distant/remote access IoT laboratories. IOT-OPEN.EU project activities also triggered 5 transnational meetings, 5 dissemination presentations planned as Multiplier Events over 20 other presentations held worldwide as well as 10 peer-reviewed research papers. We also performed pilots at the Silesian University of Technology, University of Messina, and Kazan Federal University. Partners included IoT courses as full time or elective modules in their curriculums, sometimes as part of other courses running at the moment. Now, once implementation is done, we believe that IOT-OPEN.EU project achieved the goals: we made it to interest number of students, educators, practitioners, industrial partners and policymakers to be aware of what we did and let them use our outcomes. We made an international partnership with EU countries and Russian partner and built a team that successfully collaborates and implements projects. We’re particularly proud that our project not only has an impact on consortium institutions, our students and workers, not only in the European region but also worldwide. That was proved by observing a growing number of interactions with IOT-OPEN.EU Intellectual Outputs: our coursebook is willingly downloaded by people from 5 continents, so vast is enrollment to our MOOC courses - at the moment of writing the final report, over 1000 students from 74 countries are studying IOT-OPEN.EU content via MOOC platforms, practitioners are using our VRELs. We have a ready answer on “how to study and learn IoT?” for beginners, undergraduate students, masters and industrial professionals. IOT-OPEN.EU delivers available courses, both on-site and on-line, but also several resources that can be used by teachers and tutors to constitute their courses. In details, we did two coursebooks in English and Latvian, a number of materials for in-class presentations using DLP, laboratory manual used in pilots. We provide free access to 3 online courses and digital content that includes learning curves, course definition, structure, over 100 videos via Youtube to let tutors compose MOOC courses themselves as needed. We provide access to over 10 VREL nodes with remote programming capabilities that require only a web browser! Our VREL proves the power of cooperation and integration and knowledge sharing: i.e. students from Cameroon compile code on the Estonian server and execute it in the laboratory nodes located in Poland and Italy. Those tools virtually give possibilities for persons excluded from studying in HE for whatever reason, bringing them chances to compete for those, who can. IOT-OPEN.EU project has a strong impact on the self-development of both individuals involved in the project implementation as well as consortium institutions and their neighbours, mostly industrial partners. We build a team that successfully applied to another E+ grant but also a group of passionates that has growing value and an increasing number of requests for cooperation from both research and industrial partners. We refreshed our curriculum and strengthened our HE bodies position offering professional and up-to-date courses that both teach and entertain, for following 4-6 years. And, most of all, our students get extra value on the competitive labour market whether applying for a job or setting up new startups related to the IoT thus strengthening European position in the global digital market and driver for the development of an information-based economy and society.