University-industry Interoperability Framework for Developing the Future Competences of Industry 4.0

The article explores how higher education institutions could engage employers and industry representatives into more systematic collaboration by creating environments for developing future skills of the workforce needed for Industry 4.0. We propose that dynamic work-integrated curriculum has the potential for productive outcomes by allowing learners to quickly contextualize the study content within the functional environment of the workplace, and develop field-specific and self-regulated learning competences through work-integrated learning study process. Research-based design and iterative design cycles were followed to develop the framework and prototyping a supplementing web-service to act as a central layer to facilitate stakeholder cooperation. The results of the study indicated that the implementation of the framework would provide several opportunities for inter-stakeholder cooperation, including accelerating the competency-related feedback loop between the stakeholders, and promoting development of work-integrated learning models to provide possibilities for self-regulated learning and career development.