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Strategic Partnerships for school education 2019-1-PL01-KA201-065137
Project: Teacher4.0 - comprehensive method of implementation of Industry 4.0
concept into didactic practice in primary and secondary schools

Possible benefits of Digital Twin modelling in education

There are numerous advantages of using the Digital Twin in education. In the current age, both
teachers and students should be aware of Industry 4.0 principles and advantages.

The digital twin technology and its advantages have got a great application in university education.
Well-equipped technical laboratories in colleges or universities, advanced software and computers as
well as well-educated staff of professors and doctors can make a full use of the benefits of the
technology. On the other hand, it is very important to start catching students’ attention not on the
academic level, but earlier- when they make a critical decision about their future. Implementation of
digital twin technology may have a great impact on their future decisions enlarging the awareness of
the work with technology. The students may even do not know about existing such technologies and
for the first time they couldn’t find the practical application in live. The best option is to introduce
some of the basic aspects of digital twin technology at the high school level, especially technical high
school. In technical high school young people are focused on technology more and majority of them
have got a great interest in science. The technology could be applied for example during mechanics
lessons when students learn about materials strength. It is possible to use different kinds of materials
like aluminium, steel or plastic materials, synthetic polymers like PLA, PET, PETG, or ABS. The school’s
laboratories do not have any of the equipment that is needed to perform professional test, but it is a
great beginning to catch students’ attention and show them the principles of operation of the
technology. The teacher can prepare small samples of materials, make a simulation, then make an
experiment with real piece of material and check if the simulation was coherent with real
observation. The interdisciplinary connection of milling metal materials, 3D printing of synthetic
polymers and testing the digital twin technology on self-made samples, will show the students not
only the application of the digital twin technology in simple cases, but also will teach them the
correlation between many branches of different sciences. Every time when the teacher starts
students’ interest in topic, it is possible that the students start exploring it and it may lead some of
them to study it at the higher level.

This project has been funded with support from the European
Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the
author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any
use which may be made of the information contained therein.