Abstract:

The Digital Transformation in Industry is one of the top technological drivers of change for the future of employment in the 4th Industrial Revolution. To help to face this challenge, the Erasmus+ SkoPs project aims at providing an inclusive empowerment of the European workforce by designing innovative methods and digital tools for blended teaching, training, learning, and assessment, including open-access IIoT online courses and webinars. To achieve this goal, the SkoPs team involves companies, local development agencies and HEIs from three different European countries. In this article the foundations, structure, pedagogical framework, and main intellectual outputs of the project are outlined. Also, a discussion on equity issues that may occur if not specifically considered during the training design is presented, together with a set of guidelines, templates and actions that have been put to place as part of the quality management and monitoring plan of the project to prevent such inequalities from occurring. Finally, to further contribute to augmenting the equity in education, the article discusses the need for such projects to be accompanied by a comprehensive communication plan to help not only disseminate and increase the impact of the training modules across European countries, but also to help the projects reach traditionally disadvantaged communities such as rural areas or women. The SkoPs communication plan includes examples of actions particularly designed for this purpose.

Keywords:

IIoT, SkoPs, online courses, MOOC, educational equity.