Abstract:

Current developments in the labour market require competent and motivated personnel capable of adapting to change. In this regard, Higher Educational Institutions, HEIs, have to produce graduates who are ready to work in a global, multicultural and constantly evolving environment. Traditional education does not always answer the needs of the field, and new teaching and learning methods for new skills are needed. It is important that the needs of the companies are matched with the education provided and this can only be reached with HEI-company cooperation.

This paper presents a new model, the Real Life Problem Solving model (RLPS), to widen HEI-company cooperation. The RLPS model was conducted in the context of an Erasmus + Knowledge Alliances 2 (KA2) project, the Smart HEI-Business collaboration for skills and competitiveness (HEIBus) project. It focuses on bringing students, HEI staff and companies together. The idea is that students from different study programs and nationalities form mixed groups in order to solve a real-life problem that has been given to them by a company. A practical example of implementation is also presented. The company Sensor Integration and Robotics, ISR, one external partner in the HEIBus project, proposed a project within one of its business lines, new technologies in the agro sector.

Keywords:

University-Business cooperation, innovation, multidisciplinary.