E-learning for textiles

The guide for smart practices is the supporting raw material for the development of the project e-learning course on smart textiles for textile professionals. Main aim is to offer learning content in advanced textile fields and innovation solutions - especially smart textiles for the textile enterprises, represented by these professionals.

 Smart textiles are nowadays used for various application fields within clothing, home textiles and technical textiles applications. Textile products have overcome the barrier of classical products. They are omnipresent, used in numerous and different fields. Some examples and collected stories from Textile Industries in Belgium, Czech Republic, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia include sports, medicine, buildings and defense-military applications. They combine textile technologies with electronics, chemistry, physics, and informatics and thus they represent a multidisciplinary domain. A smart textile system has basically five functions: sensors, actuators, data processing, energy supply and communication. The progress in the smart textile domain was possible due to simultaneous development of several technological domains: synthetic fibers, textile technology, electronics and information technology.

 The quality of Vocational Education and Training (VET) in technical fields at European level means competitiveness leverage in the international context and more interconnection between the ecosystem created by Industry, Research organizations and Professional Schools. European VET schools have a good performance and a strong tradition, however, the key competences and STEM multidisciplinary learning capacities have to be increased. The speed-up of technological development is an opportunity for the young VET students, while the development of the textile industry needs new job profiles including well prepared specialists in multidisciplinary fields.

 The European Textile labor market needs appropriate skilled professional workers, in order to compete on the global markets and this Guide intends to be a contribution to it.