Designing a curriculum for the Internet-of-Things-Laboratory to foster creativity and a maker mindset within varying target groups

Disruptive technologies, individualized products and minimum lot sizes result in new challenges concerning the ability to change for production systems. The accompanying growing share of information and communication technologies in the manufacturing sector leads to new competence requirements and changed competence profiles. These again are the basis for a competence-oriented design of learning-scenarios and the appropriate curricula in education and further training. Therefore, learning opportunities that foster creativity and reasonable promote the so-called ‘maker mindset’ are requested to speed up business innovation and stay competitive within an increasingly turbulent market. The demand for Internet-of-Things-Laboratories will be underlined based on a gap analysis. For this purpose, the key aspects of a previously designed “Industry 4.0” competence profile (to fit the requirements of a digitized industry) and a content analysis regarding the learning objectives of mechanical engineering curricula are taken into account. Afterwards, the conceptual design of the IoT-Lab – attracting three target groups (high school students, undergraduates and graduates as well as representatives of industry) and including a strong focus to action-oriented learning – will be presented in detail. Each workshop covers design and production of the housing – using additive manufacturing –, the sensor and / or circuit configuration, the programming process and integration into the IoT-Labs’ or any other network system.