According to the survey of World Economic Forum [tinyurl.com/jzlr5le], the Digital Transformation, especially in Industry (Industry IoT / IIoT), is one of the top technological drivers of change for the future of jobs, employment, skills, and workforce strategy in the 4th Industrial Revolution. On one hand, the preparation of the European workforce for such an enormous diversity of skills in the field of digital transformation requires the support of the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) towards integrating IIoT skills. On the other hand, the pandemic situations negatively affect the quality of the support of HEIs in this respect and force the HEIs to limit their face-to-face activities and a sudden shift to online and distance learning as a result. For example, based on the survey on the impact of the COVID-19 on European Universities (May 2020,), 88 HEIs out of 92 HEIs have provided distance learning opportunities to 60% or more of their students, and 58 HEIs stated to have implemented online courses [https://ec.europa.eu/]. As a result, the HEIs plan the quicker move with more funds to digital transformation. Also, the pandemic situation affects mobility matters. The survey also described that the COVID-19 crisis has negatively affected 86 out of 92 HEIs in student mobility and 81 out of 92 HEIs in staff mobility. Therefore, the activities including blended mobility formats (i.e. short physical mobility that is blended with virtual mobility) and the development of online courses and virtual support are of the utmost importance in response to the pandemics. Furthermore, for this development to be considered successful, the design of all the activities need to make sure that they are not leaving anyone behind, and that they are ensuring equal opportunities among people of all backgrounds. In particular, the design of these activities needs to aim at shrinking the gender gap in ICT-related disciplines, which is currently causing both vertical and horizontal job segregation (Verdin et al, 2018) [doi:10.3390/socsci7030044], and also to diminish inequalities due to disabilities. Only by taking these aspects into account, the HEIs can fulfill their commitment with the society to contribute to a preparation of the European workforce that is truly inclusive. The main goal of the SkoPS project is the inclusive empowerment of the European workforce development through online/virtual skills training for digital transformation towards mitigating the impact of pandemic situations, taking into account the support of HEIs to boost the up-skill and re-skill readiness in society and industry. This project promotes the skills of engineers and workforce in the domain of IIoT, one of the most influencing and emerging technologies with significant economical and social benefits as well as trade and collaboration potentials. The project explicitly includes the gender and accessibility perspective. SkoPS is particularly designed to equip education based on virtual cooperation of its network around the EU and targets the growing demand for professional IIoT skills by providing innovative and inclusive methods and digital tools for blended teaching, training, learning, and assessment including open-access IIoT online courses and webinars especially designed for the European workforce. In this regard, SkoPS strengthens the virtual cooperation and networking between its partners and across the EU to provide the required skills towards improving the competitiveness of the European workforce through the safer support of digital technology. In order to meet this objective, the consortium delivers open-access online/virtual training materials consisting of state-of-the-art skills based on the IoT curricula at HEIs at the European standard levels. A selection of the courses will be designed to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible and will be designed with the aim to attract more women to the IIoT field. The provided courses and webinars are adapted to the newest online training materials of the European partners of the project and fill the training gaps in the European Workforce. The virtual skills training and periodical live Q&A sessions’ programs will be available on the project website and the users will have access to an online/virtual education portal that includes all the skills training materials. The online support center will check the responsiveness of the virtual/online training platform. The consortium for the strategic partnership consists of four partners from three European countries ranging from academia to industry. The involvement of non-academic partners ensures harmonizing the workforce training courses and webinars with the market and industry needs. In particular, the consortium delivers accessible and inclusive courses and webinars with state-of-the-art skills in digitalization for engineers and experts following European standards.
The following goals have been achieved during the implementation of the SkoPS project. - Mitigation of the impact of the pandemic situations by providing new training materials based on a digitally transformed education concept of SkoPS - Development of a set of cohesive and free-access training materials that addressed the needs of the European industry regarding the emerging IIoT technologies to be used in pandemic situations. - Consideration of accessibility, gender equity, and geographical inclusiveness, e.g., rural areas. during the design of the courses - Promotion of networking among industrial and academic partners and non-partners institutions (stakeholders) in the field of IIoT. - Supporting the development of digital skills among educators and learners and ensuring they are up-skilled and re-skilled for the digital transformation and equipped with enough digital tools or platforms with required training for the most efficient use of digital resources. - Providing enough resources, strategies, and support to educational institutions to ensure that all individuals including those ones with different levels of abilities that access to technology, can engage in digital education effectively. - Focusing on leveraging innovative technologies to enhance the quality and effectiveness of digital education. - Facilitating collaboration and networking between educational institutes, experts, and technology providers. - Providing the possibility for sharing the resources, expertise, and best practices which enable all stakeholders to learn from each other and develop future potential solutions to address the upcoming requirements. - Provide new content over state-of-the-art for developing essential course materials in IIoT in form of MOOCs (http://mooc-quality.eu/qrf) and intellectual outputs based on European standards. - Developing 10 intellectual outputs in the form of different types of the contents such as slides, and videos wich helps more engagement chjich covers efficient unique learning styles. - Providing the initial digital tools to learners and educators for implementing e- learning activities covering similar situations as the Covid-19 in the future.
The digital transformation in industries requires a diverse range of skills of the workforce that can be gained using training materials from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). But, the COVID-19 pandemic started to spread in Europe in 2020 which caused lots of difficulties and new challenges and need for new capacities in teaching, learning, and training which are already addressed in the proposal. In order to respond to the circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 the Erasmus+ programme has supported two additional strategic partnership formats. The SkoPS project aimed at supporting building "Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness" in the fields of training and higher education, especially, in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), by facilitating and modernizing local training and education system in Europe, fine-tuning the training course materials in a type of MOOC for up-skilling and re-skilling of engineers in the field of IIoT (IO1-IO8) and pedagogical guidelines for trainees and trainers (IO9-IO10) with efficient use of digital resources in digital transformation in exceptional pandemic situations and distance learning, providing blended mobilities to promote networking among its industrial and academic institutions for sharing the know-how and success stories, providing an E-learning platform with a focus on accessibility, inclusiveness, and gender equity.