Plan and Develop Advanced Knowledge and Skills for Future Industrial Employees in the Field of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Edge Computing

Daniele Mazzei,Maksymilian Mądziel,Lamprini Pappa,Daniele Atzeni,Chrysostomos Stylios,Xavier Solé-Beteta,Grzegorz Dec,Łukasz Paśko,Anna Carreras-Coch,Dorota Stadnicka

doi:10.3390/su14063312

Abstract

Knowledge and skills in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Edge Computing (EC) are more and more important for industry. Therefore, it is crucial to know what current students and future employees can offer to the industry. University students develop their knowledge and skills to support the industry in implementing modern technologies in the future. It can be expected that the first source of information for students will be lectures and other activities at the university. However, they may obtain knowledge from other sources. This article presents the results of research conducted among students assessing their own knowledge and skills in the field of IoT, AI, and EC. The research was preceded by an analysis of curricula at selected universities in terms of topics related to AI, IoT, and EC. Based on the results of the analysis, survey questions were prepared. The developed questionnaire was made available to students. The research sample for the survey participants was 563 students. The results obtained were analyzed. The results of the analysis show which issues are better known to students and which are worse. The information presented in this paper can be a source of information for the industry that can assess the competences that are or will be available on the labor market in the near future. Additionally, universities can obtain information on the areas in which there are competency gaps and which methods of teaching AI, IoT, and EC are better perceived by students.

Highlights

IntroductionMany industry forecasts for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) market can be found in the literature, and all agree on the importance and potential of this technology for increasing productivity in many industrial sectors
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: Section 2 reviews the literature on students’ knowledge on Artificial Intelligence (AI), Edge Computing (EC), and Internet of Things (IoT) for I4.0, Section 3 describes the methodology used for the analysis presented in this paper, Section 4 includes a summary of the curricula review, Section 5 details the questionnaires’ implementation, Sections 6 and 7 correspond to the conduction and results of the survey, respectively, Section 8 discusses the previous results, and Section 9 concludes the paper
It is obvious that the topics related to AI, IoT, and EC were discussed in courses such as Artificial Intelligence, Computational Intelligence and Deep Learning, Machine Learning, or Internet of Things and Edge Computing

Summary

Introduction

Many industry forecasts for the Artificial Intelligence (AI) market can be found in the literature, and all agree on the importance and potential of this technology for increasing productivity in many industrial sectors. The dependence on the emergence of AI in running industries and shaping the education, transports, and health sectors is well known in the literature [1]. Gartner has stated that “Worldwide AI software revenue is forecast to total $62.5 billion in 2022, an increase of 21.3% from 2021”, and that “by 2025, the market for AI software will reach almost $134.8 billion” [2].

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Discussion

Conclusion