Learn what Industry 4.0 means for design and engineering education

We have seen an overall increased focus on upskilling and reskilling across almost every industry. There are pervasive skills shortages in many sectors, and part of that is because of how jobs are changing. In most cases work that is simple or repetitive is being automated. That leaves more creative work and problem-solving work for humans to do. As a result, organizations are looking to their employees to bring more critical thinking skills, problem-solving skills, and collaboration skills to the table in addition to their technical skills. It also means that employees need to increase what we call RQ or Robotics which is their understanding of how to leverage automation to help them do their jobs better. We see these trends creating more of a human/machine partnership, rather than a simple case of humans being replaced by automation.

One of the challenges that educational institutions and educators face today is that technology evolves faster than their curriculum. As a result, it's difficult to provide students in the classroom with the exact environment and toolset they will use in the field. With that in mind educators need to continue to partner with companies and other organizations where the theories that they are teaching to their students are put into practice. This is also key to what we know about learning in general. It's critical for learners to have both informal learning opportunities such as observing or discussing what they have been taught in a formal setting, and practical opportunities to try new skills in the real world.

Businesses and educational institutions need to form a strong partnership to solve some of these problems. Most companies don't want to become learning institutions and vice versa educational institutions are not likely to spin up entire manufacturing facilities or other kinds of real-world environments simply for learning purposes. Yet both of those things are necessary for learners to be able to make the transition from novice to expert. This partnership is necessary to create the workforce of the future. There are other stakeholders as well, including government workforce development programs, tool and equipment vendors, and the learners themselves.

The most important lifelong skill that learners need is a growth mindset and a commitment to continuous learning. The only thing that we truly know about the future is that it will be different. It will require different skills, and both individuals and organizations will need to grow and evolve in order to be ready for that future of work. The basic skills that carry many people through their careers are human skills such as communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and problem solving. The technical skills are almost guaranteed to change as technology continues to evolve, so the most important skill we all have is our ability to grow and develop and learn new things.

The way our brains process information through video as opposed to in person is significantly different. There's quite a bit of academic research on this, and just in our own experiences, we’ve become pretty familiar with the experience of, for example "zoom fatigue". Structuring learning programs for a hybrid environment is not as simple as taking something that works in the classroom and replicating it in a virtual environment. If you want to deliver a program in a hybrid modality, it needs to be intentionally designed and optimized for that environment. That might mean shorter sessions, as well as integrated hands-on experiences. The tools and technologies are also changing and evolving as well, giving us new opportunities to use things like virtual or augmented reality for learning purposes. While some organizations and learning institutions will go back to traditional classroom-based learning once the pandemic wanes sufficiently for that to be possible, because of what they have learned from these experiences over the last 2+ years.