Ontology-Driven Approach for Competency-Oriented and Student-Centered Engineering Education

The evolution of education ecosystems has histor-ically been linked to social, economic, and technological ad-vancements' culminating in the emergence of education of the future, what we might call Education 4.0. To comprehend the challenges and opportunities presented by this new educational era, it is imperative to examine the preceding educational revolutions, ranging from antiquity to the present day. Education 4.0 should respond to the learning challenges posed by mod-ern society's dynamic education needs, while drawing insights from the benefits of past education generations. In this new context, learners should become architects of their education, and institutions must adapt to cater to individual needs. To fully exploit the potential of technology in education, we require a conceptual model that allows us to optimize the benefits from its utilization while emphasizing new pedagogical approaches. This model must include all stakeholders in a common generic semantic space, enabling students to acquire competencies and teachers to design learning resources that precisely meet the needs of our society. Having this generic common semantic space would facilitate the integration of initiatives proposed by major players, such as the curricula recommendations proposed by the ACM and IEEE. The research results are being applied in the development of the ISA NUM program, a new French computer science engineering training initiative. The program leverages an ontology-driven competency model, aligned with the ACM Computing Curricula 2020, to address the current societal demands in the field of computer science. This model forms the basis for an intelligent cyber-physical education system that integrates virtual and physical learning environments, integrating advanced technologies like virtualization, artificial intelligence, IoT, and semantic web. Moreover, this system integrates learning analytics features aimed at facilitating designing and developing personalized, flexible, and dynamic learning paths. Education 4.0 represents a promising future for education, aligning it with the ever-evolving digital landscape and the specific needs of modern learners and society.