What is SEA:ME?

SEA:ME (Software Engineering in Automotive and Mobility Ecosystems) is an innovative self-learning curriculum at master-level – in software engineering for mobility. It was first offered to students in 2022-23 in the European capital of mobility: Wolfsburg (Germany), home of VW.

This curriculum was built in Wolfsburg, with experts in mobility IT, coming from industry and academia. It is constantly extended, reviewed, updated, and further improved based on expert feedback and evolving trends affecting employers.

SEA:ME provides students with domain-specific skills and an understanding of foundational concepts of developing software solutions for mobility systems of the future. It includes a focus on in-vehicle technology (embedded systems), emerging autonomous driving systems, mobility ecosystems (smart / shared mobility, traffic management and smart city schemes, intermodal linkages of different mobility types, etc.). And in its current deployment season, 2024-25, it has added two new learning areas: Cybersecurity for Mobility, and Safety Critical Systems.

However, the defining features of SEA:ME go well beyond its content, of which parts can also be found in advanced university programs. What really sets SEA:ME apart are the following characteristics:

Curriculum content built with industry and science experts who volunteer their expertise toward designing, reviewing, updating and incrementally improving the curriculum in real time. In an open source setup that enables constant evolution of the program – matching current topics and emerging trends in the industry. This enables students to become more attractive to employers, to easily integrate into first internships / jobs, and to do realistic career planning while studying.
Practice-focused team work instead of lecture attendance, writing papers, or engaging in theory-laden discussions. SEA:ME learning is defined by working on projects, which present students with challenges to be solved in teams. This requires students to research, identify, select, and deploy their own tools (programming languages, software solutions). While being provided a dedicated lab environment with staff support and hardware to code and test on(to). Additionally, different students working on the same project / challenge will by design use different tools and come to different solution paths. And then learn from each other when sharing their approaches and paths with each other. All of this both intensifies and speeds up student learning outcomes. And their direct application to first jobs.
“Peer Learning” methodology. This approach to learning was pioneered by the likes of Montessori and later applied to IT education. We have brought it to the first master-level self-learning curriculum in mobility and IT. And further innovated by fusing it with team work on hardware in a dedicated lab environment.
Team-based learning. In SEA:ME, peer learning is taken up a notch, to working in dedicated student teams that make higher-level learning / challenges possible. By students combining their different (study) backgrounds, skill sets, and creativity types. And of all of their individual experience before joining SEA:ME. Students team up for each project, and can request staff to greenlight re-formed teams after completing each project. Thus, students remain flexible in choosing the learning projects that they individually want to master – and to find and join forces with other students of similar interest.
Learning in an agile work format. The teams of students are put into an agile team work framework, just as it is used in software developer teams. They are initially coached in the basics of such collaborative work, accompanied by academic staff that participates in regular stand-ups and reviews. And they are held to account regarding their continuous workflow and documentation.
Graduates who are twice more qualified and satisfy employers. For one, SEA:ME students stand out from regular IT graduates by learning foundational domain-specific coding concepts in mobility. In addition, they become self-reliant in problem solving and ideating, by learning how to complete projects on their own and researching their own solutions. Finally, they are easily integrated into existing developer teams via their learned and tested agile skill sets. All of this combined makes for an employment profile that a) leads to hiring over regular university graduates, and b) provides high employer satisfaction.
Non-profit nature, open source development, and focus on replication. SEA:ME has been developed in open source fashion and continues to be iterated and extended with support of experts, and increasingly of other educational institutions. To such institutions, SEA:ME is offered for replication, free of charge, as long as it is deployed in non-profit shape. The idea behind SEA:ME is to share it globally in open source fashion, to provide career and life opportunities for as many students as possible. (see “Offer SEA:ME”).

SEA:ME has already successfully educated students in its first local installation in Wolfsburg (Germany) – run, tested, reviewed, and improved upon by the creators of SEA:ME, in a specially set up lab (“Wolfsburg Mobility Lab”). First graduates have earned internships and even direct job offers, from Bosch to CARIAD to Hyundai to regional start-ups. A cohort of 35 students is currently studying in Wolfsburg from July 2024 to June 2025.

Currently, two new installations of SEA:ME are in launch mode in the Fall of 2024. In Korea, where the government funded COSS innovation consortium is applying SEA:ME as a practice-related extracurricular activity to boost their students’ job qualifications. And in Portugal, where educational innovators Shaken.notstirred are setting up a dedicated lab for advanced students in Porto. Another installation in Latin America is in sponsor acquisition phase. And we look forward to hearing from more institutions worldwide.