Abstract:

The EU Digital FabLab Project was designed for responding to an EU Call for “Partnership for Digital Education Readiness” in the context of the Erasmus+ Program.

It started on 1st March 2021 and ended on 31st July 2023, involving seven partners from seven different nations: CTCP (Portugal), Footwear Technology Centre of La Rioja(Spain), Politecnico Calzaturiero Scarl (Italy), Technical University of Iasi (Romania), IPS (Poland), CEC and with HeartHands Solutions (Cyprus).

The DIGITAL FABLAB project drew upon the new opportunities offered by Augmented Reality to propose a fully digital, immersive, accessible from anywhere, appealing Footwear FabLab that provides an incomparable learning-by-doing experience. The Project achieved the objective of developing, testing, consolidating, and disseminating of a Joint International course for digital “Learning by Doing” on Footwear manufacturing integrally anchored in digital learning strategies.

The Project completed the development of 3 groups of outcomes:
IO1 - JOINT INTERNATIONAL COURSE FOR DIGITAL “LEARNING BY DOING” ON FOOTWEAR MANUFACTURING
The first outcome consisted in the co-creation of a digital joint international course for the practical learning on Footwear manufacturing, supported on practical already existing Units of Learning Outcomes (ULOs), integrally anchored in digital strategies. It delivered the definition of a mapping of the different curricula on Footwear manufacturing already existing in the countries involved in the partnership. Moreover there was the creation of joint curricula for footwear manufacturing based on the previous mapped ULOs.

IO2 - JOINT VIRTUAL SHOE FAB LAB AND CORRESPONDENT CONTENTS IN AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)
This outcome represented the core of the Project, presenting three main areas of activity. First, the joint virtual Shoe Fab Lab which replicate, in a digital environment, through Augmented Reality (AR), the real environment and facilities of a fab lab dedicated to footwear manufacturing and prototyping, available for IVET and CVET.
Second, the creation of contents in AR on Footwear manufacturing, to be displayed in the joint virtual Shoe Fab Lab, facilitating the acquisition of practical skills on footwear production. Third, the design of a LTTA, which consists in a course curriculum for trainers, teachers and coaches on how to use authoring tools (Blippar) for the development of contents in AR.

IO3 - COMMON METHODOLOGY ON TRAINING/TEACHING/COACHING FOR TRAINING ITINERARIES BASED ON AUGMENTED REALITY (AR)
Definition of a common methodology on training/teaching/coaching for training itineraries based on Augmented Reality (AR) including a manual for developing the capacity to implement innovative digital training/education strategies as designed in the previous two Objectives. It also included activities dedicated to trainers/teachers and coaches inside VET providers, and organizations who will work for the certification of the results. These activities consisted in supervised training sessions, with the aim of guiding end users in the use of training activities with content in Augmented Reality.

To conclude, the Project aimed at boosting an absolute transformation of the practical training through the use of the ShoeFabLab concept with the one of Augmented Reality. This was the first time in which such an outcome was effectively reached thanks to the use of the European expertise in the Footwear sector and the IT expertise for education purposes.

Keywords:

Footwear, EU, Erasmus+, Digital FabLab, Innovation, Project, AR, Education, VET.