Abstract:

The debates on Education 4.0 paradigm are focused on education process reimagination for creating more realistic and empowered learning experiences and to support inclusive, lifelong experiences, too. The future is placing the responsibility for competences development on the trainees and switching the role of trainers most on their coaching and mentoring activities to guide, facilitate and enabler the learning adventure. Existing educational systems must evolve to facilitate the spread of Education 4.0, being a more adequate way to satisfy the new generations needs for training, learning and skills/competences development. The context of the engineering studies is more challenged and offer more opportunities in adopting innovative pedagogic approaches for Education 4.0. The present article addresses this topic and demonstrate best practices of remote work and education of students enrolled in engineering studies at Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania.

The presented research is demonstrating the digital transformation through development of digital readiness, resilience, and capacity (via innovative pedagogic approaches), stimulating innovative learning and teaching practices of students and teaching staff involved in industrial engineering studies, particularly the two best practices of:
(1) product design subject of study when using 3D printing technologies, the created maker space capabilities and facilities in the university library, and supporting the learning process by the open education resources available on the e-learning platform;
(2) industrial logistics subject of study when exploiting industrial cases, models available in the logistics museum (co-created by students) together with the created OERs on the e-learning platform.

The best practices present ways for three critical skills and competences development: problem/project-solving, collaboration and adaptability which are the three critical skills that Education 4.0 must impart to students. Thus, the innovative pedagogies, demonstrated by the best practices, support the collaborative learning and refer to peeragogy (a peer-learning pedagogy focuses on co-creating and co-learning with peers), heutagogy (a student-centric learning and teaching strategy where students determine their learning pass independently accompanying by a lot of reflective practices), and cybergogy (focuses on engaging students in an online environment to advance their cognitive, emotional, and social learning).

Acknowledgement:
The presented article is related to the implementation of the VirtualEDU project – “Upskilling and certification scheme for virtual educators” (Erasmus +, Erasmus+ KA220-HED - Cooperation Partnerships in Higher Education, 2022-1-RO01-KA220-HED-000086331, https://respectnet.eu/).

Keywords:

Innovation, pedagogy, peeragogy, heutagogy, cybergogy, engineering studies, hybrid education, remote work, collaboration, Education 4.0, VirtualEDU project.