WHY: The climate challenges and the digital transformation are two of the main drivers changing the world today and it also changes the way companies do business. Therefore, it is essential to address both drivers for companies in order to ensure a sustainable future environmentally and financially. The skills and competences needed to develop digitalized products and awareness of the environmental challenges are therefore crucial for the European workforce and industry to continue being competitive in a future green economy and to maintain jobs across Europe. WHAT: Although, all the partners are involved in other activities and projects related to digitalizing and sustainable issues, combining the design and development of digitalized products (smart and connected) to sustainable issues is considered a new and innovative way for the partner organisations to work in developing new and better teaching material for their students. Being able to integrate sustainable issues and address some of the climate challenges when designing new products are moreover foreseen to be a competitive advantage in the future for companies. Therefore, the DIGIDEMO project seeks to raise awareness about environmental and climate challenges, making it a natural consideration designing, and developing digitalized products. DIGIDEMO aims at: - strengthen the cross disciplinary capabilities and awareness on sustainable issues among HEI students from primarily mechanical programmes and programmes within the field of electronics/ICT giving the students a more holistic understanding - supporting teachers in planning and executing cross-disciplinary activities at existing programmes/courses and/or new programmes/courses. HOW: The main objective is to develop minimum 20 DEMONSTRATORS (IO2) (4 demonstrators at each partnering institution) and implement them in teaching activities at educational programmes at the partners. The demonstrators will be examples of digitalized products developed based on cases from industry. The demonstrators will work as a ‘boundary objects’ for the teachers to facilitate cross-disciplinary activities and to strengthen cross disciplinary capabilities and awareness on sustainable issues among students working with digitalizing of products. Moreover, to support the teachers, a secondary objective is to create a FRAMEWORK (IO1) for developing the demonstrators, ensuring homogeneity of the demonstrators being developed in DIGIDEMO. The framework will also allow the different demonstrators to be classified and positioned, e.g., on the type of technology used or the expected environmental impact. To ensure the sustainability of DIGIDEMO and the availability of the project results to people outside DIGIDEMO, an ONLINE LEARNING COURSE (IO3) is developed, making it possible for teachers outside the project to exploit the results. The online learning course will make it possible to exploit the existing demonstrators and/or develop new demonstrators using the guideline and thereby scale-up the impact of the results made in DIGIDEMO. WHO will participate: DIGIDEMO is a collaboration between the following educational institutions UCN (Denmark), ESTA (France), FHV (Austria), FTO (Norway), and UEMR (Romania). The main groups of participants involved in DIGIDEMO are: - Teachers from the partnering institutions (25 in total) - Students from the partnering institutions (250 in total) Moreover, the representatives from national stakeholders will also be involved in projects, ensuring its relevance to practice. What will the IMPACT be: The results of this project will primary and directly influence the local and regional level, through ensuring a better match between educational skills and industry needs as well as a greater awareness of the climate challenges and how improved digitalised connected products can help meet these challenges. Students become more attractive for the employment market and educators get also additional skills.
The DIGIDEMO project aimed to raise awareness about environmental challenges, making them a natural consideration in designing and developing digitalized products. More specifically, DIGIDEMO sought to: • Strengthen the cross-disciplinary capabilities (mechatronic) and awareness of sustainability issues among HEI students, primarily those in mechanical and business programs, as well as programs within the field of electronics/ICT, providing students with a more holistic understanding. • Support teachers in planning and executing cross-disciplinary activities in existing programs/courses and/or new programs/courses. The results of this project were expected to influence the local and regional levels primarily and directly by ensuring a better alignment between educational skills and industry needs, when developing digitalized products, and fostering greater awareness of environmental challenges and how digitalized and connected products can help address these challenges. Moreover, the objective was to educate students to be more valuable in the company's market, enhancing their competitiveness, and simultaneously improving the knowledge, skills, and competencies of educators.
The environmental challenges and the digital transformation, also known as the twin transition, are two of the main drivers changing the world today. They are also changing the way companies conduct business. Therefore, it is essential for companies to address both of these drivers in order to ensure a sustainable future, both environmentally and financially. The skills and competencies required to develop digitalized products and awareness of environmental challenges are therefore crucial for the European workforce and industry to remain competitive in a future green economy and to sustain jobs across Europe. The ability to integrate sustainability considerations and address environmental challenges when designing new digital products is also expected to provide a competitive advantage for companies in the future. As a result, when educating the future workforce of European companies, it becomes crucial to address these challenges. Hence, institutions within higher education must adapt to this development by upgrading their educational programs to support European companies.