Smart Workplace: Students’ Opinion on Digital Readiness of Educational Institution

Abstract

The shift from the traditional physical working places to smart ones by utilizing growing digitalization is actively taking place in transportation industry. The specialists utilizing smart technologies have to be ready to take new opportunities. The discussion of the competences of future professionals is going on and the question of the readiness of educational institution to prepare specialists for the future has to be investigated. The objective of the paper is to present results of the investigation about the students’ opinion on digital readiness of educational institution to prepare future professionals being able to work at smart workplace in transportation industry. The paper presents the findings of the exploratory research by applying multi-dimensional model of competences and analysing the quantitative and qualitative data of the students’ survey. The research results demonstrate that students understand the importance of digital readiness as a condition to be able to work at smart workplace. However, the higher educational institutions have to design study programmes in a way to pay more attention to the development of digital, soft and especially self-awareness competences to ensure readiness of the graduates to accept the digitization challenges at labour market in transportation industry.