Abstract:

Europe's educational teaching approach for the next four years aims to harness and develop and strengthen the four disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics through a student-centered approach, with the aim of increasing the number of students in these fields and indeed increasing the number of students, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. In recent years, both in our country and in Europe, the levels of young people who drop out of their studies, due to financial and other difficulties, are increasing, with the consequence that many schools of these subjects are left without students, but also cause a decline in the future in many related professions, due to the lack of graduates in this field.

The Europe 2020-2024 target is to increase the proportion of young people in these disciplines, but also to prevent them from dropping out.

But how can we raise awareness among young students so that they are motivated to stay in their studies? It is now imperative to increase the satisfaction of their needs through the educational process of these courses, at all levels of education, using innovative educational scenarios through technology (OECD, 2016a). STEM education anyway requires a student-centered learning environment with interaction and creative learning on the part of students, introducing the use of new technologies across the whole spectrum of education, let alone in higher education where physical presence is not required. Besides, many technological applications today, such as augmented reality, Internet of Things, can contribute positively to the development of new University Curricula, aiming to increase student interaction in courses and enhance their participation in the educational process in a productive way. In fact, it is an opportunity after the rapid implementation of digital education during the period of the Coronavirus in our country, to use distance education courses on a wide scale and to establish them on a permanent basis with the development and support of appropriate infrastructure (networking, cloud services, help desk support for students, professors, etc.) for all parties involved (University - Professors - Students - Industry stakeholders).

In this paper we will present the effort through a European project to implement collaborative learning in University level courses in different Universities in Europe. This implies a change of concept in the creation of course material: by shifting to a student-centered process and applying the inquiry-based learning method (Roberts 2012) and participatory action in the educational process, by analyzing the material in an interdisciplinary way (Choi & Park 2006) and strengthening towards the creation of holistic concepts for students through experiential learning. The research method chosen will be a case study with a quantitative and qualitative approach. It is a small-scale intervention, as it will be studied in an undergraduate level course at the participating universities and the factors surrounding real-time and real-world learning environments will be observed.

Keywords:

Design of thinking, co creation, HEIs, co synergy among Industry and HEIs.