EMERSION: Education to Meet the Requirements of Software Industry and Beyond - Establishing, Implementing and Evaluating an Industry-Oriented Education Model in China

China and the European Union both face the challenge of building dynamic and internationally focused knowledge economies. Information Technology (IT) is a key enabler of such economies and IT education must be at the forefront of any strategy to meet the challenges of building them. Recognising this, the School of Computing in Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Ireland, the National Pilot School of Software in Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), China, and the School of Computing and Information Technology in the University of Wolverhampton (UW), United Kingdom, established a collaboration which resulted in the EMERSION (Education to Meet the Requirements of Software Industry and Beyond - Establishing, Implementing and Evaluating an Industry-Oriented Education Model in China) project. This project designed, implemented, and evaluated an education model with an industrial ethos to deliver sustainable, high-quality, and effective IT education in HIT. The project was completed in 2006, and this chapter presents a review of the main lessons that emerged from it.