The European Commission has designated another project of the FITPED consortium Future IT Professionals Education in Artificial Intelligence as a Good Practice Example. According to EC rules, around 7% of projects receive this status. The designation means that the project met the expectations of the Erasmus+ programme in areas such as impact, transferability, innovation, sustainability, communication and budget management.
FITPED-AI focused on designing, implementing and testing an educational model for future AI professionals while supporting IT students’ interest in AI. In parallel, the project also addressed topics around the effective deployment of AI solutions in practice and also addressed barriers that prevent students from considering an AI career (especially unclear ideas about what AI really is and what skills its understanding requires).
The main emphasis in the implementation was placed on the creation of study materials and the online environment. The content was created in small teams and a complete content creation cycle based on student feedback and peer review was used for each course.
The main output of the project is a model built on 11 courses in three areas: prerequisites for AI, fundamentals (e.g. data preparation, knowledge discovery, machine learning), and application areas (e.g. NLP, learning analytics, cybersecurity). The courses are deployed on the Priscilla platform with modules that support interactivity, feedback, and student projects.
During the teaching, educational data was collected to better understand learning behavior and identify problems in both content and learning. The procedures and methodologies from the project were published at conferences and in journals.