Abstract
Curricula have important effects on students’ professional skills. To prepare for the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), countries are recommended to implement new curricula to develop new competencies for the automation workforce. As Information technology (IT) lays the foundations for the core 4IR-relevant emerging technologies (big data, internet of things, artificial intelligence, etc.), countries have developed new IT engineering curricula to prepare engineers for the 4IR. By conducting a structured focused comparison for bachelor IT curricula containing core 4IR modules of 57 Vietnamese and 35 Malaysian universities, this research aims to find appropriate approaches in developing curricula to prepare 4IR competencies for IT engineering students for Malaysia, Vietnam and implications for other nations. The research found that, only new stand-alone curricula with a focus on 4IR competencies can prepare engineers for the 4IR. It then provides seven lessons for designing new 4IR engineering curriculum and for continuing studies on 4IR-ready curriculum.
Highlights
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has already dramatically impacted many aspects of manufacturing, business, education, health sciences, as well as social and cultural life around the world
In Vietnam only 41% of the Information technology (IT) departments provided 4IR relevant technologies training, as compared to 86% of the departments in Malaysia and more public universities than private universities focused on educating engineering students 4.0 technologies (68% compared to 32%)
2) Developing new 4IR curricula of Malaysian Universities Malaysian universities focused on developing new curricula more than embedding 4IR courses in the existing curricula
Summary
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has already dramatically impacted many aspects of manufacturing, business, education, health sciences, as well as social and cultural life around the world. The WEF and A.T. Keaney (WEF & Keaney, 2018) reported on the 4IR-readiness of 100 countries according to twelve identified core technology-related innovations. To prepare for the 4IR, WEF recommends countries to develop their future workforce through new training approaches with new education curricula (WEF & Kearney, 2018). As IT lays the foundations for 4IR-related manufacturing and for the emerging multi-disciplinary technologies such as cyber-physical systems (CPSs), IoT, AI, and big data, countries are changing and developing new curricula to improve key skills for the workforce (Iscoop, 2017; Kurdahi, et al, 2016; Törngren, et al, 2017). The findings contribute knowledge of new trends in preparing IT engineering students for the 4IR and lessons for universities in designing new 4IR engineering curricula for the future economy
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
