Higher education is facing growing demands to respond to the green transition and digitalisation of society while ensuring that students develop skills relevant to changing professional environments. Strengthening practice-based learning, curriculum innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration is therefore increasingly important for preparing the workforce for the green transition.

The project Digital Twins and Living Labs for Ecological Transition in Higher Education: Professionalising the Green-Collar Workforce (EcoTwin-HED) focuses on integrating green and digital competences into higher education through authentic learning scenarios, real-world cases and collaboration between students, academics and external stakeholders.

Project partners will develop Green Living Lab learning environments and pedagogical use cases across different climate contexts to support practice-based education. These activities will be accompanied by a six-module interdisciplinary curriculum and an ESCO-referenced skills mapping to support learning outcomes and skills recognition and curriculum alignment. By connecting real-world Living Labs and sensor-based building data with digital twins and Virtual Lab scenarios, the project creates an experiential learning environment in which students can develop and apply green and digital skills to real sustainability challenges. Project outputs will be piloted and refined through structured learning activities, with mentoring and feedback supporting learner engagement and reflection.

EcoTwin-HED runs from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2029. It is coordinated by Karlsruher Institut für Technologie.  The project is funded through Erasmus+. The project partners include UP IAM, INNOMATE, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena and Asociación Empresarial de Investigación Centro Tecnológico del Mueble y la Madera de la Región de Murcia. At the University of Primorska, the project is led and implemented by Dr. Jakub Sandak and Richard Acquah.

Through this collaboration, the EcoTwin-HED partners aim to strengthen green and digital competences in higher education and support the development of skills relevant to the green transformation.

Authors: Richard Acquah and Lara Prah