Innovative Open Education on IoT: improving higher education for European digital global competitiveness Erasmus Project

Project Title

Innovative Open Education on IoT: improving higher education for European digital global competitiveness

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

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.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 332559 Eur

Project Coordinator

POLITECHNIKA SLASKA & Country: PL

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI MESSINA
• ITT Group
• TALLINNA TEHNIKAULIKOOL
• RIGAS TEHNISKA UNIVERSITATE
• SAINT PETERSBURG NATIONAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, MECHANICS AND OPTICS