Dissemination of ASEE Industry 4.0 Webinars and Summit Findings

The industrial and professional world is undergoing rapid technological advances. These advances comprise Industry 4.0, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, defined as the convergence of digital, biological, and physical technologies so as to disrupt manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, and all industries around the globe. Currently, educators and training providers view Industry 4.0 technologies in segregated silos.

To succeed in Industry 4.0, educators will be required to radically rethink their models, methods, and offerings to meet the needs of industry and a rapidly changing society. The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) launched a multi-year dialog among industry, academia, policymakers, professional societies and accreditors on the desired content knowledge and practices needed to prepare graduates of engineering, engineering technology, and engineering technician programs for Industry 4.0 and beyond.

These efforts culminated in a series of webinars and an in-person Summit. To capitalize on the momentum of the new ideas and relationships the webinars and Summit helped spark, the next step will be to distill and communicate the key observations and findings from the events.

This project will broadly disseminate the findings of these webinars and the Summit among the nation’s community and technical colleges and engineering and engineering technology departments. Policymaker briefings will summarize the key findings regarding the challenge of, and opportunity for, meeting US engineering and skilled technical workforce needs, and a Practitioner White paper will provide a more detailed PDF-format summary of the work presented at the webinars and Summit.

These materials will include observations, suggestions, and the examples of best practices on the following: Policies for Building Skilled Technical Workforce for High-Value Manufacturing; Community Colleges and ATE Program Addressing Workforce for Industry 4.0; Alternate Pathways, Platforms, and Policies: Educating Engineers and Skilled Technical Workforce; Scaling Up Industry-Education Collaboration; Industry 4.0 Education, Policies, Perspectives, and Pandemics; A Call for Action for Education 4.0 Pathways; Leveraging New Partnerships and Work/Learn Opportunities for Workforce Development; Expanding Equitable Access to Engineering and Technical Education; Role of Funding Agencies and Influencers in Improving and Enhancing Education and Training Programs; and Preparing the Workforce to Meet Societal & Corporate Responsibilities. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the Nation's economy.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.