Identify the necessary skills for designing the training tracks for the next-gen lighting engineers - Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier - Toulouse INP Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2022

Identify the necessary skills for designing the training tracks for the next-gen lighting engineers

Georges Zissis

Résumé

CONTEXT The construction sector faces new challenges in order to provide smart, energy efficient and sustainable lighting environments for infrastructure, cities, buildings and the industry, in order to follow the 2050 low-carbon economy roadmap of the European Commission. Thanks to the growing demand for energy-efficient lighting systems, building on smart technologies, as well as the striving efforts to reduce the ecological footprint and at the same time promote healthy and safe living, the Smart Lightning Market is expected to grow at a 20%. Additionally, shifts to the digital economy and universal connectivity enabling the Internet-of-Things (IoT) will be dominant trends across industries in the coming three decades. However, current professional discourse on lighting engineering and design portrays different approaches to the profession depending on academic background. As such, a holistic approach to lighting design is not achieved, but rather confined and not addressing interdisciplinarity, a must-have skill of the 21st century. As such, there is an imminent and growing need of lighting engineering skills that bring together lighting design and smart technologies, as well as skills that take into account ecological and human-centric issues on lighting systems in the connected world that we live in. PURPOSE OF THE WORKThe Environmentally Conscious Smart Lighting (ECOSLIGHT) European project, in the frame of Knowledge Alliances global program, aims to design training programs in lighting that will actively enhance employability and improve career prospects of lighting-related professionals, while also help businesses to find the right competences they need to increase their competitiveness. The first step in ECOSLIGHT project is to identify the competences required as well as particular job role profiles related to the Construction Industry needs for lighting professionals. Then to create modular Vocational Education and Training (VET) curricula based on the learning outcomes approach and the adult learning principles. This modular concept will allow to apply the work performed in ECOSLIGHT either in initial or Life-Long Learning higher education programs (from EQF5 to EQF7). Overall, the project is expected to present a serious impact in raising the productivity and results of professionals working in the construction sector, and especially in the areas of exploitation of contemporary technologies, energy saving, and human well-being. The project coordinated by the Hellenic Open University (Greece) and allies, beyond the coordinator, 12 institutions from Greece, France, Germany, Italy and Austria.APPROACH To achieve this objective, questionnaires have been developed within ECOSLIGHT Project. The purpose here was the collection of additional data for analyzing needs regarding Technical Training in order to create modular VET curricula based on the learning outcomes approach and the adult learning principles in order to develop lighting design skills that bring together lighting design and smart technologies, as well as skills that take into account ecological and human-centric issues on lighting systems in the connected world. The questionnaire was accessible via web during 6 months (June 2020 to December 2020), 438 answers have been collected and analyzed.The responses in the questionnaire were coming from mainly individual lighting professionals (72%) followed by people responding in the name of their respective companies (21%). The responders work mainly as consultants (37,3%), in construction sector (26,3%), manufacturing of lighting systems companies (24,1%), Scientific R&D activities (23,2%), education (21%), Arts & entertainment (19,4%) but also Hospitality and Tourism sector (12,5%). The responders have in majority (72%) either Master/Engineering (EQF6) or Bachelor (EQF5) degree (Figure 6), 65% of them they consider themselves as experts in the domain of lighting and at least 74% are concerned by environmental impacts of artificial lighting.Further, ECOSLIGHT Partners conducted Interviews with representatives of companies and cities of international reputation, or even with individual professionals on the sector of lighting design, aiming to identify the skills needs of professionals that will support current and future lighting-related activities. Globally, during the 1st period of the project, interviews have been conducted in France (8), Greece (10) and Italy (13).MAIN OUTCOMES Our study shown than clearly that it is very-different to to find well-trained lighting professionals in the employment market in all levels and all project countries. It also shows that the main reasons of this difficulty are the lack of skills (52%) and then the shortage of available professionals (36%)The first tangible outcome from the questionnaires and professionals’ interviews was to define what is a “lighting professional” and what are its missions. In fact, defining a “Lighting Professional” (such as lighting engineer and lighting designer) is a challenging task, because the profile is so versatile and cross-discipline skills are necessary. The results shown that Lighting professionals are expected to be well-educated individuals that acquire a concrete knowledge of the technical requirements related to the lighting field while using the latest technology products and software that facilitates and enhances the lighting design. Further, a lighting professional should be able to tackle different kind of contexts, from internal solutions (houses, farms, gym) to public spaces. The mission emerging lighting professionals should be, among others, (1) serving each project's technical requirements effective; (2) Incorporating energy efficiency principals and "green" ideas; (3) Accomplishing an efficient combination of technical capacity and cost-efficiency; (4) Accompanying policy changes and taking into account the evolution of uses.Today for fulfilling the employer’s expectation for lighting professionals is strongly linked to the adequation of education/training programs. However, the analysis of responses to ECOSLIGHT questionnaire shown the existing training for Lighting professionals is considered not being in adequation with Construction Industry needs because the offered training level is not adapted and the existing training programs are outdated (37,1%) or just inexistent (40,5%).The study shown that in the next 5 years construction sector will need “most likely” any type of lighting professionals, but with clear preference to people with EQF5-6 level like technicians, installers and associated professions with engineering background. Professionals with higher EQF levels like R&D scientist and engineers are more unlike to be among the top priorities. Further, Technical-commercial profiles seems to be not so popular. Today’s needs focuss on Smart lighting specialists (top priority) followed by lighting designers. Further, the need of having well trained professionals mastering the light pollution and environmental impacts of lighting seems to be an additional priority. Looking closer to the training needs for lighting professionals expected by the sector we observed that the responders rank at the higher level almost equally all proposed skills. There is a slight preference for skills on Lighting System technology (including smart lighting), when skills in economic models related to lighting, policies & regulations, as well as daylight integration arrive at the last position. It should be noted here that the last position for “daylight integration” skills may be surprising at a first glance, but there is a rational explanation on that: Construction Industry employs massively Architects and in a large majority Architects have good skills in this domain. Beyond technical knowledge and skills, the most important is having ideas and opportunities (e.g., Spotting opportunities, Creativity, Vision, valuing ideas, Ethical and sustainable thinking) followed by problem solving (e.g., identifying needs and technological responses, creatively using digital technologies, etc.) and into-action skills (e.g., Taking the initiative, Planning and management, coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk, working with others, Learning through experience). Information and data literature (e.g., evaluating or managing data, information and digital content, etc.) is also important, followed by digital content creation (e.g., developing digital content, copyright and licenses, etc). Personal resources like self-awareness and self-efficacy, motivation and perseverance, compacity on mobilizing others and resources, seems to be lesser in priority.CONCLUSIONS In this paper by analyzing critically the 438 collected answers though on-line ECOSLIGHT original developed questionnaire and combining them with the information about Constriction Sector development and need in human resources we were able to (1) understand clearly what are the needs of the sector for well-trained lighting professionals and (2) indent the training needs for future lighting professionals who want find jobs in the sector. In the next step, using these outcomes, we will design the evolution the most popular “job-profiles” as will need in the near future. This information will be used in second phase building the a more appropriated training curricula for lighting professionals.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-03781952 , version 1 (20-09-2022)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-03781952 , version 1

Citer

Georges Zissis. Identify the necessary skills for designing the training tracks for the next-gen lighting engineers. 14th European Lighting Conference LUX EUROPA 2022, Czech Lighting Society & Slovak Lighting Society, Sep 2022, Prague, Czech Republic. ⟨hal-03781952⟩
21 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More