Experiential learning in Industrial Engineering education for Digital Transformation

Digital Transformation has raised important benefits and pressures to societies in different aspects of daily life. The adoption of digital technologies demands people to develop adequate skills to capitalize on existing and future opportunities in the business and labor markets, respond to communities' needs, and help with sustainability issues. This work highlights that universities need to educate professionals with the skills to lead, manage and operate the digital change. This involves, developing in students the capacity to deliver high value contributions enriched with digital technologies to make a decisive impact on their disciplinary fields. Accordingly, Experiential Learning is referred as an effective pedagogical approach for Digital Transformation education because of the emphasis on innovation activities and active learning. An educational framework is presented to integrate different digital technologies, a structure of educational components, and strategic drivers for value delivery in organizations. The framework allows to conceptualize challenging learning experiences for Industrial Engineering education in terms of real-world digital transformation challenges to develop relevant learning outcomes. A method is also provided to conceptualize learning experiences in these terms. An instance of a learning experience is presented for the Lean Thinking Learning Space (LTLS) to exemplify the ideas of this work and provide a platform for further implementations.