INTEGRATION OF TRANSVERSAL SKILLS IN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACTIVE AND HEALTHY AGEING SYSTEMS

The growing aging of the population as well as the importance of the health care for citizens make necessary to evolve the control procedures provided by our health systems. In order to avoid the saturation of the health facilities and, at the same time, improving the well-being of the patient the term “Homecare” is becoming more popular, i.e., patients with chronic illnesses or recently underwent surgery recover at their homes. This idea is possible only if safe and reliable preventive mechanisms of health parameter management are developed in order to allow experts in health to control remotely the aforementioned cases.

This new paradigm, coined as Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA), represents the new social and technical challenges for the higher education area. AHA not only arises from the social necessities but also from the strategic plans developed by some governments, e.g., Basque Government with the Research and Innovation Smart Specialization Strategy (RIS3) and the Innovation, Technology and Science Planning (PCTI) Basque Country 2020.

The advances in the technology make necessary a change in the educational paradigm, i.e., the workers of the future or, similarly, the students of the present must acquire a series of transversal competences, the so called 21st century skills, not only from their field of expertise but also from the rest of specializations. In the case of AHA, transversal competences from health, telecommunications, computer science and manufacturing fields are of special importance.

Looking at the state-of-the-art contributions in the field of AHA, research and applications of wearable systems have evolved together with the appearance and integration of different types of sensors. Biomechanical and cardiorespiratory monitoring wearables are the ones that have initially achieved the greatest commercial success. The use of health-related wearables has acquired great relevance due to the development of short and medium range wireless communications systems. This has made possible the emergence of intelligent health monitoring systems based on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

In this context, the existing contributions in the field of AHA only refer to the technological part. However, AHA applications should be developed by several agents from different fields of expertise such as public health agents, technicians or administration staff. As a result, this work presents a learning methodology to obtain the 21st century skills necessary to develop AHA systems from a vocational education viewpoint.

The proposed methodology establishes the types of agents involved in the development of an AHA system and links them to the different areas of expertise in vocational education and training. Additionally, a flowchart of the necessary knowledge exchange among the agents of an AHA system is defined.

This work contributes to the educational world presenting the transversal and technical necessities in an AHA project, specifying the tasks of the agents involved and proposing a transversal methodology to be followed in the vocational education of the students and training of the workers for a successful fulfillment of the AHA environment. The transversal knowledge is achieved via collaborative and problem-based learning tools considering the ETHAZI learning model which is being developed in the Basque Country. The technical skills of each agent are obtained using active and experiential learning tools.