Leveraging IoT in Experiential Learning to develop operational knowledge in the digital era

The complexity brought by digitalization in operations is disrupting blue-collar and technical jobs, increasing levels of knowledge required to perform them. When workers such as electrical grid operators become “smart grid operators”, the breadth of knowledge required to them increases. The shift from I-shaped to T-shaped profiles has been described by literature (e.g. Demirkan, 2015), and the need for a shift from T-shaped to Pi-shaped profiles, with a second “depth” of knowledge in data science, has been discussed for skilled jobs such as researchers (Faris et al., 2011). In this work we show how, with the advent of digitalization, also operational job profiles will need more depth in a second field of knowledge: not only domain knowledge, but also digital literacy. This study intends to explore the benefits of integrating IoT technologies in a Challenge-Based Learning approach to innovate Education and develop pieces of the new digital knowledge that will be required to operational jobs of the future. By means of an action research, we explored how the operational firm-specific knowledge needs of an electric distribution firm are evolving, and provided an off-the-job Challenge-Based training to two classes of students involved in its dual apprenticeship. Our findings show how such experiential learning activities based on IoT technologies can be fostered by concurrent dual apprenticeships, which act as the “concrete experience” phase of the experiential learning cycle (Kolb, 1984; Morris, 2019). Its two tacit phases, namely “experience” and “experimentation” (Raelin, 1998), were the two that benefited the most from complementing on-the-job and off-the-job training. Last, we disentangle the contributions of firm and the technical high school, and discuss how such structured collaboration can be effective in co-creating effective Challenge-Based activities. Further studies will be needed to explain in detail benefits and rationales of involving a university as off-the-job provider in such educational paradigm.