The European Alliance for Sports Engineering Education (A4SEE) is a consortium of universities and industry partners that strive to improve the education of both student and professional sport engineers.
The Alliance will develop and host innovation fellowships, online courses and dedicated learning activities for students and industry professionals.
The challenge
Whilst there is an established provision of sports engineering education within higher education, the rapid changes in the sports industry are not always mirrored in the relatively static provision of these courses. For instance, current university courses in sports engineering do not provide education on emerging technologies (e.g. big data, self-healing materials, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, etc.) or societal changes (e.g. demographics, sedentary behaviours etc.). Furthermore, university graduates from sports engineering curricula do not always possess the appropriate innovation and entrepreneurial skills (also ‘transversal skills’ or ‘21st century skills’) to meet the needs of the sports industry.
The method
We will develop three innovative learning activities containing credit-bearing joint courses aiming at international students and company staff. These learning activities will address leading topics in the sports engineering field and also aim at improving entrepreneurial skills.
Knowledge of leading topics is important for development of the next generation of sports products and services, such as innovative testing methods, biomechanics, measurement techniques and materials in sports engineering.
The impact
This project contributes to establishing innovative curriculum projects, joint courses and modules. By partnering with world-leading organisations in sports equipment, sports data analytics and sports organisations, the HEIs will adopt new ideas, methods and processes. This will directly improve quality of teaching and multidisciplinary cooperation. Through the strong and complementary partnership within the A4SEE project, HEIs will be able to identify new research opportunities.
Benefits in the long term can be described as: internationalisation, building partnerships, sharing resources and access to quality infrastructures.
