Driven by Industry 4.0 and digital technology, jobs are becoming more flexible and complex. People’s capacities to be entrepreneurial, manage complex information, think autonomously and creatively, use resources, including digital ones, smartly, communicate effectively and be resilient are more crucial than ever. Europe also needs more high achievers who can develop the cutting edge technologies and solutions on which our future prosperity depends. With this project we recognise that without higher education institutions (HEIs) and systems that are effective in education, research and innovation and connected to their societies, Europe cannot respond to these challenges. Therefore, it is the main objective of this project to respond to the horizontal priority of the programme: Supporting educators, youth workers, educational leaders and support staff, since the TEACH4EDU4 project activities are designed to enable the creation of the environment for implementation of new learning and teaching approaches in computer science and related disciplines. The project includes higher education institutions joined in the partnership to enable its teachers and students a unique exercise in acquiring new skills and new teaching methods in line with the developments in Industry 4.0. Furthermore, the project will very concretely contribute to the achievement of the additional priority set out in the Call: Tackling skills gaps and mismatches. With the unique concept of Joint Creative Classrooms this project is expected to offer mobility from home experience and a significant increase of knowledge in the field of computer science education. The project will result in a series of tangible and intangible results: Catalogue of new forms of teaching, learning and assessment in CS in Edu 4.0 and related teachers’ skills and competences, Learning design models, Collaborative Teaching Methods for Joint Creative Classrooms, Guidebook on the use of learning data to create evidence-based learning design decisions and Partnership Manifesto - Transferability of the developed models.
The overall objective was to respond to the need for Industry 4.0 with the partnership that developed solutions of how to accelerate the corresponding transition within HEIs in computer science towards Education 4.0, where humans and technologies are aligned with the aim to enable the achievement of skills, competencies, and knowledge necessary. Three specific objectives were: (SO1) to enable continuous improvement of skills of teaching staff to respond to the requirements of Education 4.0; (SO2) to design and develop transferable learning design models that guide implementation of innovative teaching, student performance tracking and learning methods to enable the necessary shifts; (SO3) to promote innovated, effective, internationalized digital age teaching and learning environments. This was achieved with 5 Intellectual Outputs, 8 piloted Joint Creative Classrooms (JCC), 7 multiplier events, and continuous dissemination. Teachers from different educational systems gained valuable skills within an international blended environment. The project increased the attractiveness of STEM since the JCC has been a collaborative practice attended by students from home from different countries and included university-business cooperation.
Jobs today are becoming more flexible but more complex and people’s capacities to manage information, think problem-based, use digital resources, communicate effectively, and be resilient are more crucial than ever. This project recognized that without higher education institutions (HEIs) updated and effective education, research and innovation, and inter-relation with the market Europe cannot respond to these challenges. Project activities enabled the environment for learning new skills and teaching approaches in computer science and related disciplines that correspond to the challenges of Industry 4.0, and also Education 4.0. The project contributed to a) resolving skills gaps and mismatches between HEIs, as partners developed a catalog of new teaching skills based on the prior extensive research of the existing knowledge and methods in IO1; b) creating and piloting Joint Creative Classrooms between HEIs based on their experience and expertise in IO3; c) creating new LD models with linking the teaching courses content with newest trends in research and industry 4.0 with LD tool (IO2, IO3). IT companies provided added value with real-case examples in JCCs. All are highly transferable among HEI in Europe and internationally.