Designing authentic, project-based learning environments in higher professional education is far from clear-cut yet and can be a difficult task for teachers. The research question driving our research was: How can we design and improve project-based, ICT-supported learning environments in higher professional education? It was our aim to find valuable pieces of the design-puzzle in current literature and integrate these pieces. We intended to complement current insights with inventive insights from an explicit design perspective by carrying out empirical studies.
Experimental Learning and Innovation Environments, such as Living Labs, Field Labs, and Urban Innovation Labs, are increasingly used to connect multi-stakeholders in envisioning, creating, experimenting, learning, and trying out novel responses to diverse societal challenges. With designers facilitating the co-creation processes that take place in these labs, the design discipline plays an important role in these experimental environments. Applied Design Research in Living Labs and other Experimental Learning and Innovation Environments combines a focus on Experimental Learning and Innovation Environments (or Living Labs) with a focus on Applied Design Research. It offers an interdisciplinary perspective by bringing together diverse stakeholders from different disciplines. The book will adopt an interdisciplinary perspective, integrating insights from design, innovation, sociology, technology, and other relevant fields. It showcases real-world examples and case studies of successful Applied Design Research in Living Labs and focuses on design dilemmas that emerge while working in these Experimental Learning and Innovation Environments. The book explores the role of various stakeholders, including the roles that may play out during the development of Experimental Learning and Innovation Environments, and goes on to discuss the balance between fixed or fluid roles of these stakeholders and the polarity between working within one specific discipline versus working with various expertise or disciplines. Designers, government representatives, and researchers who apply a living lab approach to solve multi-stakeholder challenges in various fields by applying Urban Innovation Labs, Energy Living Labs, Mobility Living Labs, Health Living Labs, Education Living Labs, or Social Living Labs will find this book of interest.
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In this paper we explore the influence of the physical and social environment (the design space) son the formation of shared understanding in multidisciplinary design teams. We concentrate on the creative design meeting as a microenvironment for studying processes of design communication. Our applied research context entails the design of mixed physical–digital interactive systems supporting design meetings. Informed by theories of embodiment that have recently gained interest in cognitive science, we focus on the role of interactive “traces,” representational artifacts both created and used by participants as scaffolds for creating shared understanding. Our research through design approach resulted in two prototypes that form two concrete proposals of how the environment may scaffold shared understanding in design meetings. In several user studies we observed users working with our systems in natural contexts. Our analysis reveals how an ensemble of ongoing social as well as physical interactions, scaffolded by the interactive environment, grounds the formation of shared understanding in teams. We discuss implications for designing collaborative tools and for design communication theory in general.
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The PANTOUR consortium builds on previous knowledge and tools produced by the Blueprint for Sectoral Skills project/NTG Alliance and will develop new tools and methodology to address strategic and sustainable approaches and cooperation between vocational education, training, higher education, enterprises of the tourism sector, looking to boost innovation in Europe (in tourism, leisure and hospitality).Societal IssueThe aim of this project is to map and bridge the existing skills gaps in Green, Social and Digital skills of workforce in tourism, leisure and hospitality.Benefit to societyMaking lifelong learning and mobility a reality, developing innovative learning solutions and promoting inclusiveness and access to education. Promoting active citizenship, building equal opportunities and addressing gender equality, diversity and inclusiveness in targeted actions.The consortium aims especially at designing innovative and cooperative solutions to address skills needs in the tourism ecosystem, with the development of outputs such as: the Sectoral Skills Intelligence Monitor, the Tourism Skills Lab, Resource Books for Trainers, the implementation of the National Skills Groups, a Skills Strategy Plan for 2026-2036, among others. With the exploitation of its outputs, PANTOUR seeks to benefit job seekers, unemployed and employed workers from the industry, employers, SMEs and micro entrepreneurs, dedicating a special attention in reskilling and upskilling the workforce on future skills needs in digital, green and social skills.The number of people benefiting from this proposal will be over 10 million that work across the tourism and leisure sector in Europe.The consortium is a multi-disciplinary partnership which comprises 13 European partners: Industry Partners and Tourism Sector Representatives, Universities and Transnational partners. Project lead is CEHAT (Spain). The other partners are GESTLABOR (Spain), Turismo de Portugal (Portugal), Zangador Research Institute (Bulgaria), Technological University Dublin (Ireland), Federturismo Confindustria (Italy), VIMOSZ (Hungary), European Tourism Association ETOA (Transnational), Satakunta University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Ruraltour (Transnational), Landurlaub (Germany), University of the Aegan (Greece).
Every organisation needs to have organised Company Emergency Response (CER) staff. The training of CER must combine knowledge acquisition with knowledge application in performing physical procedures and demonstrating skills. However, current training does not secure well-prepared CER-staff in the long term. Playful learning is that a more engaging type of training can be created which combines knowledge with skills training. But while social interactions can strongly and positively impact learning as well as motivation, this is not easily facilitated within digital learning environments Two questions are particularly important for playful learning designers: • How can playful learning make use of the combination of digital and non-digital working mechanisms to foster learning and motivation? • How can trainees learn and play together if they are not always present at the same time in within the same learning environment? The saying at IJsfontein is that individually you can progress, but only together you can persevere. The aim of this collaboration with Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen is to provide playful learning designers with concrete and reusable design guidelines for leveraging social processes in playful learning across the digital/non-digital boundary. As such, we seek to contribute to the practically-oriented design knowledge available to the creative industry through design research that is grounded in practice. This type of design knowledge can only be fully developed when evaluated across different contexts of application. Therefore, we will form a consortium of partners from the creative industry to write a joint follow-up funding application
