Preparing Students for a Digitized Future

Abstract

Through this study, a vehicle to enhance existing education curricula was demonstrated, by exposing students to research-informed educational activities and to experience the key digital systems used in different industrial sectors. Digital skills are in high demand across the globe, with over a million digitally skilled people required by 2022 in the U.K. alone. With digital skills being vital to a country’s economy, there is a need to develop the higher education sector to prepare students for a digitized future—a key area of future graduate skills. The overall aim of the project was to train students in cutting-edge digital technologies through two separate week-long boot camps, targeting undergraduate and postgraduate cohorts. To this end, an educational project primed by research-informed teaching was successfully organized at the University of Birmingham in collaboration with the industry, to directly enhance the student’s personal development in the digital field, the findings of which are reported in this article. Researchers and practitioners presented practical applications of various digital technologies during the boot camps.