Main description (English)

The textile and clothing industry is traditional for Europe. It includes 176,400 companies, 99% of which are SMEs. It is in a huge need of human resources because a great part of them is expected to retire in the next few years. The development of the necessary competences and skills for existing workforce and attracting qualified young experts of the next generation has become a priority for the companies. The young people prefer ICT and are not aware that they are widely applied in the textile industry. This determines the tremendous need for engineers, especially those who can work with CAD, CAM, CAE and PLM systems. According to the existing university curricula the ICT and digital education as well as entrepreneurial education often is neglected. The analysis of the presented trends led to the idea to develop a European project, which main purpose is to develop a curriculum and syllabuses that meet the requirements (incl. digital and entrepreneurial competencies) of the business to the specialists working in the field of textile and clothing design and production. Experimental part The developed project titled "ICT in Textile and Clothing Higher Education and Business" was funded under Erasmus+ Program Key Action 2: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices. The following main steps in achiening the aim are foreseen: performing a gap analysis, development and conducting a pilot course, development of courses in all textile and clothing sectors as open information products and dissemination. Results At this stage, there are results from a survey conducted among 62 companies. It includes 84 questions, structured in 10 sections. The answers will help to specify the needs and requirements of the business. Discussion Comments and deep analysis of the obtained answers was made. Conclusion The training materials and courses developed under the project will be entirely practical, interactive and suitable for distance learning. They will be located on an open access web-platform. Keywords: Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), Entrepreneurship, Interactive distance learning, Practical and selectable free accessed modules. The information and views set out in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. Neither the European Union institutions and bodies nor any person acting on their behalf may be held responsible for the use which may be made of the information contained therein.