This Project aims to build capacity and enhance human skills of Palestinian academics, fresh graduates, and technicians to support the establishment and operations of smart cities in Palestine, and hence reduce unemployment. The Project will focus on three fields that are considered enablers for smart cities; IT Security, Telecoms and Computer Networks, and Smart Grid. The specific objectives of this project are:
I. Developing & Delivering Academic courses to enhance knowledge & skills of university students
II. Developing & Delivering tutorials to fresh graduates, private & public sector employees in order to help bridge the gap between academia and industry
III. Delivering the courses and tutorials via e-learning to guarantee flexible & wider delivery
IV. Increase cooperation between academia & industry.
V. To promote entrepreneurship and encourage students and trainees to be job creators
VI. Sustain lifelong learning by establishing an e-Academy which will also ensure academia-industry partnership
To achieve the objectives, partners including public bodies will firstly identify the exact needs. Then study tours for PS academics will be organized by EU partners in order to gain knowledge and identify learning resources. After that PS and EU professor in collaboration with EU partners will develop university courses and society tutorials. The developed material will be delivered to students and trainees, and then they will be revised. After that some of the developed material will be adapted for VLE environment.
Provoking academia-industry cooperation will include many activities like joint supervision of projects, internships, projects incubations, and Faculty to Factory program. The e-Academy will be established to maintain good relationship with industry. It will also maintain and promote the developed material to larger communities. The dissemination of the project will be guaranteed by a web portal, leaflets, dissemination workshops and others means.