European farm sector is currently at a crossroad: embracing the future or staying stuck in old practices. The future is represented by Precision Agriculture (PA), which is a new mind-set approach and a new network of different technologies. For this reason, the farmer of the future, the so-called “agripreneur 4.0”, needs a mix of competencies such as agricultural, entrepreneurial, digital and environmental skills. One of the main goals of the SPARKLE project is creating a new e-Learning course for agricultural students, in order to enhance their business-oriented skills and entrepreneurial activity in a smart environment. In this paper the SPARKLE e-Learning Platform for Sustainable Precision Agriculture is presented.
The European farm sector is currently at a crossroad: embracing the future or
staying stuck in old practices. The future is represented by the so-called Precision
Agriculture (PA), that is defined as “an integrated information and production-based
farming system that is designed to increase long term, site-specific and whole-farm
production efficiency, productivity and profitability while minimizing unintended
impacts on wildlife and the environment”
The future of agriculture is the so-called “agripreneurs 4.0”: an entrepreneur who works in agriculture and adopts in its business PA technologies (SPARKLE, 2019). Therefore, this means that the agripreneur needs a mix of competencies a full set of entrepreneurial skills and, at the same time, a complete set of PA related knowledge, along with agricultural skills. Taking a look at the agricultural university education, it is clear that the third set of competencies are available in all the institutions, while the other are, in many cases, missing. The SPARKLE project underlines the need to improve university education in the agricultural sector to train students on the relevant skills for becoming agripreneurs 4.0 which is currently barely absent.
In this paper we present the SPARKLE e-Learning Platform for Sustainable Precision Agriculture (SPA). SPARKLE e-Learning Platform is the primary outcome of the SPARKLE project and it aims to implement an educational package for students and agripreneurs to help them in growing specific skills on entrepreneurship and sustainable precision agriculture.
For being able to offer the students a new training program, it is fundamental for the Universities to establish more direct contacts with farmers, researchers and students, for better understanding the level of knowledge on PA and identifying the entrepreneurial needs for starting new Sustainable Precision Agriculture (SPA) businesses.
SPARKLE, an acronym standing for Sustainable Precision Agriculture: Research and Knowledge for Learning how to be an agri-Entrepreneur, is a Knowledge Alliance project, co-financed under the ERASMUS+ project. One of the aims of SPARKLE is to bring together research, SPA farmers, and students to develop and fill the gap in the educational offer to prepare farmers and agriculture’s business managers of the future.
The consortium is composed of 3 different categories of partners
- Universities, through their Agriculture Faculties (University of Florence (IT), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (ES), Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (GR), Universidade de Evora (PT))
- Companies providing advanced services to companies/farms (CSIC – research center on automation and robotics (SP); AgroSAP (Precision Agriculture consultancy (SP); ErreQuadro – technology foresight (IT); Valuedo – entrepreneurial education (IT))
- Farms adopting PA technologies (Quinta da Cholda (PT) – arable crops sector; Rezos Brands (GR) – fruit growing; Mazzei 1435 (IT) – viticulture).
One of the main aims of the SPARKLE project is to develop and assemble the
elearning supporting materials for the SPARKLE e-Learning Platform (general
guidelines for attendees, materials and quizzes/tests/etc.). For this reason, a set of
technical criteria were suggested for the development of the e-learning course. The
SPARKLE project e-learning course is an asynchronous online course (courses where
students are not required to participate in sessions at the same time as the instructor)
using a learning management system. The e-learning courses are designed for large
numbers of participants, offered for free and without any entry qualifications. The
course is being provided through MOODLE Platform and for a specific number of
participants, mainly students and precision agriculture users, lead to an ECTS
recognized certificate. Moodle is an open-source Learning Management System
The final prototype of the course is an e-Learning course with the initial architecture (four areas and 14 topics) hosted on https://sparkle-project.eu/moodle web address. The course provides to students: video material, slides, textual material and some case study for a minimum of 13 hours of e-learning. This part is assessed through online tests. After this self-directed online learning, there are 8 hours of face to face lessons dedicate to strengthen business and management skills. To conclude the educational package, the final 4 hours of the course are devoted to case study and practical activities on the field. The course is divided into 4 areas and 12 lessons (Table 1). The target group of the course are university students, agri-entrepreneurs and academics.
The course intends to present a general overview of the state of the art of Sustainable Precision Agriculture and related technology and teaching how to build an entrepreneurial mindset. The students will explore a range of precision agriculture technologies with specific insights on geomatics, sensors, data mining, machine learning, robotics etc. for farming and innovations while taking into account the environmental, social and business issues. At the end of the course, the students will be invited to put into practice the knowledge and skills developed. Fig. 2. The Page of the SPARKLE Course Lessons.
Inside the Lessons, there were developed 56 contents that are available at a table of lessons and tasks.
The creation of such a training course, answers to a specific need that is actually unsolved. All project companies are interested in strengthening their relationship with the agricultural sector and gathering new information, advanced studies and creating more reliable networks with both Universities and companies. Some of them already work with farmers; others do not: for the latter the objective is entering in a very interesting field, bringing their advanced services to fill the entrepreneurial and PA knowledge training gaps. The three PA companies already adopting PA technologies would like to enlarge their network and contributing to the using of innovative technologies by other farms, so to create a new group of innovative agripreneurs.
SPARKLE will contribute to provide a new approach to teaching and learning entrepreneurship, at the formal and non-formal level. The project activities stimulate entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills of higher education staff involved in the project, making them educators of sustainable precision agriculture and agribusiness. Moreover, SPARKLE outcomes will be easy to multiply in other Universities and companies after the project ends.
First, at little or no cost starting from 2020 onwards, partner institutions during their regular professional activities will easily encourage new individuals from the identified target groups to successfully attend and complete the SPARKLE e-learning courses, since the educational packages will be already tested and in an accessible elearning format. This multiplication scheme allows the partners to foresee attainable gains.
Acknowledgments. This paper was made thanks to Project co-funded by the Erasmus+ program of the European Union. SPARKLE is a Knowledge Alliance Project (588241-EPP-1-2017-1-IT-EPPKA2-KA)
The European Commission support for the production of this paper does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
4. SPARKLE (2019) SPARKLE course: all the benefits in attending an e-learning course. Available at: http://sparkle-project.eu/sparkle-course-all-the-benefits-inattending-an-e-learning-course/.