UK chip vendor ARM and the University College London (UCL) have launched an educational kit designed to develop students’ IoT technical skills and to encourage more graduates to embark upon science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) related professions.

The ARM IoT Education Kit teaches users how to utilise the ARM mbed IoT Device Platform, create smartphone apps and control connected devices.

According to statistics from research by the UCL and Oxforx Policy and Research in 2012, about half of STEM graduates leave the sector in favour of careers on unrelated jobs. “Many students are not following through to an engineering career and that is a real risk to our long term success as a nation of innovators,” Izzat Darwazeh, Head Of Communications and Information Systems at UCL Engineering Sciences said.

The kit will be rolled out by the UCL’s Electronic and Engineering department in September, coinciding with a one-week IoT module for full-time MSc and continuing professional development students.

“Most students take engineering because they are driven to understand how the world works, from taking radios apart when they were children, to creating apps in high school,” Darwazeh said. “Engineering is about creative problem-solving and it’s exactly what we hope to instil in them again with the IoT Kit, which provides the tools and the knowledge to create devices and systems that could one day become best-sellers or even change our world.”

Mike Muller, CTO of ARM said: “Students with strong science and mathematical skills are in demand and we need to make sure they stay in engineering.

“The growth of the IoT gives us a great opportunity to prove to students why our profession is more exciting and sustainable than others. New technologies make it far easier to start a business and there’s a huge appetite for highly motivated young people to help companies such as ARM deliver innovation that will shape the world’s future.”