Modernizing the vocational educational training in the field social sciences and humanities towards the key enabling technologies in the digital transformation

Abstract

The Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) are those Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) classified by the European Commission (EC) as “key” for enabling the innovation and digital transformation in most of European industries, traditional sectors, as well as in society. The main weaknesses that European workers and managers show with regards to KETs are the difficulty of reaching the skills and competences for being able to translate the knowledge base into marketable goods and services. This innovation gap has been identified by the EC as the “European Valley of Death”. To solve this gap, the Europe 2020 strategy has a priority action line in the promotion and exploitation of KETs through the investment in training, support on deployments in industries as well as promoting innovation. The final goal is to stimulate growth and jobs. In this regard, the European project IoToAI has been launched to provide a novel training program for Vocational Education Training (VET) students and workers close to Social Science and Humanities (SSH) sector, focused on strengthening skills and competences with regards to some of the KETs identified by the EC and other national (in the partner’s countries) and international entities. Some of them are Internet of Things, Cloud Computing or Artificial Intelligence, among others. In this work the authors summarize the analysis carried out in the framework of IoToAI project, where the aim was to identify those KETs relevant for the target users profile expected in the IoToAI training course. The KETs have been selected from those identified by EC, those KETs in the umbrella of Industry 4.0 and Enterprise 4.0 paradigm and those included in the production technology radar reported by the World Economic Forum. The analysis is also fed by the conclusions extracted from different foresight studies published in the EU countries participating in IoToAI project reports and government strategies. The results of this work help to report the skill needs about ICTs in the field of SSH and will be used as input in the academic curriculum to be developed as next project stage.