Leading Engineering Students Towards Industry 4.0: Public Workshops for Digitalization, Lab Automation, and Modelling

The increasing integration of computational tools in engineering workflows has led to a growing demand for graduates with medium to advanced programming skills. However, current engineering curricula often lack a structured approach to incorporate programming in education, leaving many students without the necessary computational literacy (Udugama et al., 2023). In response to this gap, the Dig4Bio project has hosted multiple public workshops and training schools, starting with topics like "Introduction to Python", "Model-based Techniques in Bioengineering", “Data Management”, “Open Science” and "Introduction to Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) and Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS)” (‘Dig4Bio’, 2025). These efforts have expanded to training schools covering mechanistic modelling of microbial cultivations and advanced digital tools like BioVL. (Gargalo et al., 2022).

To assess the effectiveness of these initiatives, participant feedback was systematically collected and analyzed. Based on these evaluations, we propose a structured strategy for integrating programming courses into engineering education. Our approach focuses on designing course materials that maximize learning outcomes while maintaining student engagement. By aligning educational content with industry needs and student expectations, we aim to establish a foundation that ensures all engineering graduates acquire essential programming competencies.