Four of Sweden's largest industrial companies and four universities will, in a joint venture, raise advanced digital competence within industry. The aim is to secure strong and competitive Swedish industrial companies for the future.
The companies – ABB, Ericsson, SAAB and Volvo Group – in collaboration with Chalmers, Linköping University, Örebro University and KTH, are now launching Expert Learning Lab. The aim is to build education at the highest level for the country's foremost experts in industry. The project is financed by Vinnova and is supposed to run for at least ten years.
“This is a very exciting project with a new perspective on lifelong learning”, says Jörgen Blennow, Vice President for Education and Lifelong Learning at Chalmers.
“Here, it is not necessarily the universities that have the state-of-the-art knowledge and thus the teaching role, instead it is a matter of mutual learning at an expert level.”
The traditional forms of advanced and continuing education, including commissioned education, have been criticised by the business community for being poorly adapted to the needs and conditions of industry. On the initiative of the four companies, Chalmers and the other universities in the collaboration are now working on developing new ways of training that are better adapted to the needs of the companies in digitalisation.
“In order for Swedish industry to be able to maintain and strengthen its competitiveness, it is of crucial importance that there is an opportunity to continuously develop its excellence in advanced digitisation”, says Ulrika Lundqvist, Dean of Education for Lifelong Learning at Chalmers.
“We need new formats that better suit professional experts and engineers.”
Both Blennow and Lundqvist believe that the Expert Learning Lab can be a testbed for the development of models that contribute to the continuous learning of individuals and organisations.