Digital future knowledge for employees in medium-sized businesses

Dig­i­tal future knowl­edge includes com­pe­ten­cies in the areas of automa­tion and autonomous sys­tems. They are of cen­tral impor­tance for the com­pet­i­tive­ness and future via­bil­i­ty of companies.
The Grad­u­ate Cam­pus of Aalen Uni­ver­si­ty is address­ing this for­ward-look­ing top­ic with a new, two-stage con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion pro­gram. With the two con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion mod­ules that build on each oth­er — automa­tion tech­nol­o­gy and automa­tion sys­tems — small and medi­um-sized com­pa­nies keep their fin­ger on the pulse and can train their employ­ees in the field of automa­tion in a ground­break­ing way.
The under­ly­ing project “Qual­i­fi­ca­tion offen­sive automa­tion in medi­um-sized com­pa­nies — from automa­tion to autonomous sys­tems” has been fund­ed by the Baden-Würt­tem­berg Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics, Labor and Hous­ing since May 2019. Since then, experts from the fields of automa­tion, robot­ics and dig­it learn­ing have joined forces and devel­oped a unique, two-stage con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion con­cept with many innovations.
For exam­ple, the Grad­u­ate Cam­pus of Aalen Uni­ver­si­ty in coop­er­a­tion with the Tech­ni­cal Acad­e­my Schwäbisch Gmünd has suc­ceed­ed not only in impart­ing the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge through new­ly con­ceived dig­i­tal learn­ing nuggets, but also in active­ly expe­ri­enc­ing and design­ing automa­tion. This is achieved by work­ing with an Arduino, with which stu­dents can devel­op their own devices.

“The inno­v­a­tive, dig­i­tal teach­ing con­cept made it pos­si­ble to con­vey the con­tent in a tar­get­ed man­ner. Espe­cial­ly through the prac­ti­cal craft on the Arduino, it was pos­si­ble to con­vey the con­tent to the par­tic­i­pants in a vivid way.”
— Lec­tur­er, university

An Arduino con­sists of a micro­con­troller and soft­ware for pro­gram­ming. This has the advan­tage that even peo­ple who are less tech­ni­cal­ly expe­ri­enced can gain access to pro­gram­ming and famil­iar­ize them­selves with the sub­ject mat­ter. The Grad­u­ate Cam­pus’ new con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion con­cept thus not only brings a lot of vari­ety to learn­ing, but also moti­vates par­tic­i­pants to tack­le and solve exist­ing real-world problems.

“Our par­tic­i­pants are enthu­si­as­tic. Fol­low­ing the train­ing, they work on an inter­nal project to apply their new­ly acquired knowl­edge in practice.”
— Team leader, man­u­fac­tur­ing industry

After suc­cess­ful com­ple­tion of the first pilot phase, the sec­ond mod­ule of the con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion will start on April 30, 2021: Automa­tion Sys­tems. This can be attend­ed inde­pen­dent­ly of the first mod­ule and is aimed at any­one who has points of con­tact with automa­tion sys­tems in their every­day life and wants to famil­iar­ize them­selves with projects of the same name and has com­plet­ed an ini­tial tech­ni­cal degree.
The automa­tion sys­tems mod­ule has a holis­tic dig­i­tal focus. By means of guid­ed e‑learning units, par­tic­i­pants acquire the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge and prac­tice the trans­fer into prac­tice by means of accom­pa­ny­ing projects. In the vir­tu­al pres­ence phas­es, there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty to deep­en top­ics, ask ques­tions and work out solu­tions to prob­lems togeth­er. This makes it pos­si­ble to bring togeth­er par­tic­i­pants from all over Ger­many to work togeth­er on indi­vid­ual prac­ti­cal problems.