Research
Here you'll find a wealth of information that demonstrates the economic and wider benefits of standards.
Support for education about standards
We believe that ISO Standards benefit everybody, but we recognise that their benefits often remain hidden. This is why we believe that it is important to teach the technological, economic and societal benefits of International Standards at all education levels.
We have a number of education initiatives and provide support to our members in this area.
Some of the actions we have taken are highlighted below:
- A repository of resources and teaching materials.
- In partnership with IEC and ITU, organization of the World Standards Cooperation academic days.
- Promoting cooperation between standards bodies and education institutions in developing countries.
- Recognizing education institutions that lead the way in standardization.
Contribution to postgraduate courses
We also contribute to the University of Geneva Masters' programme Standardization, Social Regulation and Sustainable Development. The masters is an interdisciplinary programme including sociology, management and economics. It is developed in partnership by the University of Geneva, ISO and SNV (the Swiss national standards body).
The programme focuses on sustainable development and in particular the idea that development processes need the active involvement of all parties likely to contribute to or to be affected by them. It underlines the importance of the participatory processes involving public and private actors at various levels ('social regulation'), including the standard-setting practices that provide essential voluntary agreements supporting the dissemination of knowledge, best practices and monitoring tools.
All teaching materials developed by ISO for this programme are available to the ISO members.
ISO also cooperates with the Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC) of the University of Geneva and the Haute École de Gestion (HEG) of the Haute École Spécialisée de la Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO), on the Diploma of Advanced Studies (DAS) on Sustainable Management.
Training
Our training courses and technical assistance are designed for our members and cover a wide range of subject matters including training about specific standards and standardization sectors, in addition to materials covering the development, dissemination and implementation of International Standards. We also run specific courses for Technical Committee secretaries and their support staff about the standards development process.
Registered users can log into the members' area for information about the Technical Committee Secretaries' training week and other courses for Standards Developers as well as chairs and convenors.
We have put together a collection of resources on standards and education. This collection includes both teaching materials as well as resources that describe how standardization can be integrated into education.
ISO repository of teaching materials
The ISO repository of teaching materials is a list of existing teaching materials on standardization, with details of the authors and publishers. This materials have been divided into two groups:
- materials for primary and secondary education, and
- materials for university level education.
Teachers and standards professionals can use this tool to access information that can help them in designing and delivering courses on standards matters. In addition, the repository will help optimize the use of resources, facilitate the re-use of existing materials and highlight new subject matters to be addressed in the future.
Initiatives on standardization in education systems
This section contains a collection of articles, policy documents, academic research articles that describe how standardization is integrated into education in various countries. Additionally, it comprises an overview of initiatives related to educational initiatives, training and awareness raising on standardization and related topics.
Repository of standards and innovation
This section contains a collection of articles, policy documents, academic research about standards, innovation and related issues such as standards and research and development, intellectual property rights, etc..
Please note, the majority of material in these repositories is not published by ISO. Please contact the publisher in order to find out more about how to use this material, licensing fees etc.
Access the ISO repository of teaching materials
Access the Initiatives on standardization in education systems
Standardization and innovation - CERN conference proceedings
Proceedings from the ISO-CERN conference held in November 2014.
WSC Academic Day
The WSC Academic Days are designed to promote dialogue between universities and the international standards community, to raise awareness and to foster cooperation and joint initiatives.
The last event was “Standardization for sustainability: the role of education” held in Frankfurt (Germany) on 12 October 2016. The event was organized in collaboration with DKE, the German Commission for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies of DIN and VDE, and in conjunction with the ICES conference 2015 (“What industry needs from education on standardization?” 10-11 October 2016, Frankfurt, Germany).
Promoting cooperation between standards bodies and education institutions
As part of our work with members in developing countries we aim to better integrate standardization into educational curricula. (For more information on this and other objectives see ISO's Action Plan for Developing Countries).
In order to do this we:
- run a series of regional events supporting developing countries to set up or strengthen university courses on education about standardization,
- have developed a publication ("Teaching Standards: Good practices for collaboration between national standards bodies and universities") based on the outcome of the above regional events.
Teaching Standards provides an overview of the key reasons why standardization should be part of university programmes and describes the approaches followed by universities in addressing standards-related topics in different disciplines (providing a number of specific examples). It presents the various forms of cooperation between national standards bodies and universities and proposes a roadmap that national standards bodies can follow to develop or strengthen collaboration with universities (highlighting key success factors and obstacles to be removed).
A number of workshops titled "Enhancing collaboration between national standards bodies and academia" were carried out between 2012 and 2014 and were instrumental in the development of “Teaching Standards”.
Teaching Standards. Good practices for collaboration between National Standards Bodies and universities
This publication provides an overview of standardization as part of university programmes and the approaches they follow.