Work started on 1 September 2026 and the funding comes from the European Partnerships for School Development. The focus is on raising student engagement and achievements in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects – plus robotics, programming and green technologies. It will address a broader question about educational quality: how well does school prepare young people for the world they will enter afterwards? And the project aims to increase girls’ participation, strengthen teacher capacity, and find ways to scale up the adoption of these methods in other consortia and schools.
‘Add more new technologies’ isn’t the answer
STEM subjects are of the building blocks of modern life. They’re behind everything from smartphones to medical breakthroughs and how we tackle climate change. Schools across Europe are expected to improve student engagement and achievement while responding to changes in the requirements for skills from rapid digital transformation and climate change. Schools are also dealing with persistent inequalities in participation for STEM subjects and related subjects. That’s certainly a demanding combination of challenges.
“Just adding new technologies to existing lessons won’t be enough to maintain the quality and relevance of education. Schools need pedagogically sound approaches that connect knowledge with authentic problems, allow students to create and experiment, and help teachers introduce emerging technologies without making classroom implementation unrealistic,” said Dr Dimitrios Vlachopoulos.
The SMARTGREEN IoT project starts to address this issue. Dr Vlachopoulos explains: “Our proposal for this project identified a particular challenge in STEM education: students sometimes perceive science, technology, engineering and mathematics as abstract and disconnected from real life. Teachers may also lack the time, confidence and structured resources required to effectively implement interdisciplinary, hands-on STEM learning. So SMARTGREEN IoT brings together STEM education and the expanded approach that includes the arts, digital transformation and sustainability within one integrated learning model.
“Educational design and evidence will be at the centre of technological innovation. Sensors, robotics, programming and IoT are used because of what they can enable educationally – not as ends in themselves.”
The connection between high-quality education and future readiness is particularly important; young people need the ability to think critically, create, collaborate and work responsibly with emerging technologies as well as their strong academic foundations.”
From classroom to smart greenhouse
Students will ‘work’ as designers, programmers, builders, data analysts and problem-solvers rather than studying separate elements like coding, science, engineering and sustainability. They will develop and improve a functioning smart greenhouse.
The project will deliver 24 ready-made learning activities to teachers, in three versions for three different age ranges. Students design and gradually improve a smart greenhouse system using sensors, microcontrollers and a guided IoT data pipeline. Their teachers receive structured training and guidance for implementing the activities, and the projects will be piloted in schools belonging to the consortium schools, plus 10 other schools. The project culminates in a transnational challenge.
The design of the learning activities puts technical learning alongside environmental sustainability. Students use environmental data to investigate sustainable food systems, resource efficiency, environmental monitoring and data-informed decision-making. The aim is to make learning both more rigorous and more meaningful: students see how scientific reasoning, engineering design, software, data and environmental challenges interact within a real system.
Preparing students: what comes next
SMARTGREEN IoT also addresses a broader question about educational quality: how well does school prepare young people for the world they will enter afterwards? The project deliberately develops competences that are increasingly relevant for academic progression and for future vocational pathways in the digital and green transitions:
- computational and systems thinking;
- programming and data literacy;
- engineering design and prototyping;
- problem-solving and creativity;
- collaboration and communication;
- green and sustainability competences; and
- responsible use of emerging digital technologies.
They also position students as active designers and problem-solvers rather than passive recipients of knowledge.
The thinkers behind the SMARTGREEN see employability beginning well before students enter the labour market. They want to set in progress the development of confidence and transferable capabilities for working with technology, interpreting data, collaborating across disciplines and responding to problems to which solutions are not already known.
Girls in technical and leadership roles
One of SMARTGREEN IoT's central objectives is to increase girls' engagement, participation and visibility in STEM. Making sure that every student gets an opportunity to try all the roles within the school projects will make sure that students who already have experience don’t dominate the roles of designer, programmer, data analyst, builder or presenter. For teachers, the project will help them monitor participation and give them practical strategies for addressing mixed-ability groups, reducing stereotypes and creating opportunities for girls to take visible technical and leadership roles.
RSM's leadership role
Erasmus University Rotterdam is the coordinator of SMARTGREEN IoT, with Dr Dimitrios Vlachopoulos leading the project. RSM is responsible for coordination, scientific and pedagogical coherence, quality assurance, risk management and evaluation. EUR leads the project's work for developing curricula.
RSM will lead the development of:
- the shared competence framework and learning outcomes across three age pathways;
- structure and sequencing of the 24 activities;
- teacher-ready activity templates;
- student-facing learning resources; and
- assessment and feedback instruments.
Dr Dimitrios Vlachopoulos said: “The challenge for education today is not simply to keep pace with technological change. It is to ensure that innovation actually improves the quality of learning and prepares students to participate confidently in a society and labour market being reshaped by digitalisation and the green transition.
“With SMARTGREEN IoT, students will not just learn about programming, engineering or sustainability. They will use these areas together to solve authentic problems, work with real data, build functioning systems and learn collaboratively.
“For us, this connection between high-quality education and future readiness is particularly important. Schools should give young people strong academic foundations, but also the ability to think critically, create, collaborate and work responsibly with emerging technologies. These are increasingly important foundations for both further education and future employability.”
Five partners, five complementary perspectives
The SMARTGREEN IoT consortium combines academic, school, technical and applied STEM expertise:
- Erasmus University Rotterdam as project coordinator;
- The Grammar School Nicosia, Cyprus
- Organization of Educational Robotics, Science, Technology & Math STEM, Greece;
- Scoala Gimnaziala Elena Doamna, Romania; and
- BIP Tech, Montenegro.
This combination allows educational materials to be developed scientifically, tested technically and validated in real classrooms.
