DEVELOPMENT AND IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF CLOUD-BASED INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGY CURRICULA
DEVELOPMENT AND IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF CLOUD-BASED INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGY CURRICULA

Summary/Abstract: Preparing and disseminating knowledge in the field of industrial automation technology for the training of future engineers and researchers poses specific challenges for leveraging cloud-based solutions in an eLearning context. This relates mainly to the need of enabling access to real or simulated hardware and processes besides courseware and handbooks with exercises and examples. Also, going outside the closed environment of the laboratory, teaching practices and outcomes can be vastly enhanced by cloud environments which incorporate mutual knowledge from various stakeholders in the learning process, curated by the end-users. The methods and tools that enable such an approach are reviewed from an industrial automation perspective along with alternative paths to educational achievement in this field. Student engagement is also tracked and analyzed by using specific tools and platforms in order to best tailor the content and delivery method to their benefit. We discuss the key-points, achievements and program structure of the recent collaboration between the Laboratory of Industrial Information Systems within the Department of Automatic Control and Industrial Informatics, Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest and the Phoenix Contact Corporation to enhance teaching materials and improve collaboration among partner institutions at the university and student level, on related to topics such as programmable logic controllers, human-machine interface, industrial communication networks and supervisory control and data acquisition programs (SCADA). An outlook for program development and means to increase the impact of such initiatives, by leveraging novel paradigms in eLearning and software for education, are also presented and evaluated.

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