Toward Future-Proof Technical Education

Abstract

With the advent of industrial revolution (IR) 4.0, the process of digitalization is occurring rapidly in all sectors of industry and business. For instance, companies are making their operations smarter by adopting digital technologies such as big data analytics, industrial internet of things, etc. to gain valuable insights from their existing business processes. IR 4.0 technologies serve as an enabler to empower the next wave of business growth by providing efficient delivery of products and services in a timely and cost-effective manner. Such a scenario has resulted in the rising demand of workforce that are not only field competent but also possess the essential digital skills in order to cope with the fast-changing needs of the industry. From the educational perspective, the aforementioned phenomenon has led to the pressing need to nurture digital competency for both educators and students, which is further accelerated due to the global pandemic of coronavirus disease. In this chapter, we wish to highlight the importance of digital competency in ensuring a sustainable, future-proof technical education in coping with the needs of future workplace. In particular, we wish to focus on how professional digital competency can be developed through the adoption of open educational resources (OER) and open-source software (OSS). The status quo of the digitalization shift in both industry and academia will be discussed in the introduction section, followed by a critical discussion on the recent progress pertaining digital competency, OER, and OSS. By proposing a framework and suggestions on how to bridge the gap among digital competency, OER and OSS shall be presented with recommendations for future works.