Curricula Database — What does your Curricula look like? Part II
by: Duarte Oliveira
First Article Summarized — The Beginnings and the Goals
In the first article, we stated the beginnings of the Curricula Database project for ESTIEM, who were the main creators, its advantages for ESTIEM and its stakeholders and why we are a competitive NGO to make this a long-lasting and impactful project in the next years in the sector of Education.
The taxonomy, the classification, the process and the products
The big change ESTIEM introduced here in this matter was the potential to classify our Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) Subjects of any Bachelors Curricula in Europe, thus introducing the concept of “Framework” in the area of Education and Career in ESTIEM. With this, ESTIEM essentially puts every subject it reads into a box, extracting valuable information and correlations from it.
As for the Frameworks used, the team uses two that are in continuous improvement: General Classification and Specific Classification. As for the first, this one classifies the subjects into general categories (“Sciences”, “Engineering”, “Management”, …), while the second one, directly correlated with the first one, goes even more in depth (“Mechanics”, “Business and Management”, “Data Science”, …). The main reasons for the existence of two frameworks are that ESTIEM has to talk to every stakeholder, ranging from the students to the professionals like professors. Thus, ESTIEM has to have different classifications to answer basic and complex questions from both sides, like the frameworks. The frameworks are positioned as one of the ESTIEM’s competitive advantages and should be maintained and improved over time in order to be distinguished by other organisations.
When it comes to the method ESTIEM uses to produce these classifications, we had the motivation to empower our students to be the ones making it, the ones empowered to present their own curricula and country. Therefore, the team invites students from each country to classify their own curricula, always supervised by someone inside the team and finally revised by the professors from the University of Minho.
Finally, after all the work put into the creation of the framework and classification of the degrees, ESTIEM provides two concrete products: scientific and marketing reports and Dashboards. These two come for a simple purpose: to provide an analytical perspective to a complex field of Education, hence data visualization being the main ingredient in the two types of products. With these two frameworks, ESTIEM aims to increase the awareness that both institutions and students have about their Education and to create the first consultancy and commercial products for ESTIEM in the long-term.
An example, let’s test!
As an example: a comparison between University of Porto and Eindhoven University of Technology. Let’s first check the General Classification Comparison, side by side.
From here, we can already extract striking differences between them: Porto is investing a high quantity of knowledge in the Engineering field, while Eindhoven is more focused in high knowledge on areas more dedicated to core areas of IEM, such as Quality and Logistics (from the area Industrial Engineering and Management). If the results of the comparison are looked from the job market point of view, it makes total sense why this is like this: Companies in Porto are very focused on core industrial and analytical processes, requiring its students to be experts in production and manufacturing processes, as well as in Materials business and engineering valuation, whereas Eindhoven job market requires students to be more proficient in topics such as logistics and business, core areas from both the city and country. If we were to look closely to the Specific Classification of the two same degrees, we would discover that Porto has 13.33% of its degree focused in Design and Manufacturing, while Eindhoven is a powerhouse in Data Science, coming up with a 13.89% in this area, showing the big differences regarding how each course is built up and the targets of each university when it comes to the job market.
This is the power of some of the visualizations of the curricula database: to be able to understand the strategies of each university, regarding the job market and the history behind them.
The Future of the Curricula Database
Nothing is more passionate than to talk about the future of anything: the tools, the processes, the goals, the dreams. Without exception, with this database ESTIEM has a clear future in mind, translated in the next points:
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to curricula predictions — it is no news that AI is here to stay, whether we agree or not. Consequently, in ESTIEM, we survey that we will be the first Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) to apply AI to detect patterns, across time, in how a curriculum of a university is built. We already have the data, we just need the business challenge;
- ESTIEM will become the number one platform of statistics and information of IEM in Europe — not only because of this tool, but also other ones developed by the recent Professional Development Committee. ESTIEM will become, in some years from now, the international body with more treated data in the field of IEM, ranging from Education to Career Topics, through Data Analytics. This is because of the nature of ESTIEM: we are a network, so numbers play in our favor;
- ESTIEM will be a major player in the creation of new curricula in many Universities in Europe — with this treated data, ESTIEM will be in many discussions when universities need to rebuild their degrees and know what the European market demand in terms of IEM Skills and technical knowledge;
- ESTIEM will drive profit from these analyses — as we are the only ones delivering this kind of service in Europe, ESTIEM can aim to make this a monetary-friendly product for itself;
On that account, even if not intentional, ESTIEM will eventually become the Facebook of IEM in the future: the major platform with big recommendation and search possibilities on the past, current and future states of IEM, in various forms.
If you want to know more about the next steps of this project, do not hesitate to contact the creator (Duarte.Oliveira@estiem.org) or the Board of ESTIEM ( board@estiem.org ).
