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AUTHORS Miikka J. Lehtonen Katharina Schilli Theresa Berg
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IDBM CHALLENGE: transformative learning experiences through gameful blended learning
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Innovation thrives when multiple disciplines and design practices converge. This document should be read as a sort of post-mortem for IDBM Challenge; probably the first higher education course in the world combining challenge-based and blended learning. Here, the course facilitators reflect on the process as well as offer some insights on how to design similar courses and how does this all link to changes taking place in the higher education sector at the moment.
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Collaboration across cultures,
and provides a setting for
colleagues with different skill
combining theory with
sets, communication around
practice. Through practical
the globe, obstacles that don’t
experience and learning-
respond to tried and tested
by-doing, students acquire
methods… these are facts of
the skills to conceptualize,
our everyday and professional
develop and introduce socially
lives. Turning these modern
sound and commercially
complexities into advantages
successful solutions. Taught
cannot be learned only through
in autumn 2017, this year’s
theory and text books — it
course was designed
must be experienced!
together with Space Nation and supported by other
Aalto’s new IDBM Challenge
organizations to deliver a
is the introductory course for
space-related challenge with a
new Master students of the
societal angle.
IDBM Program (International Design Business Management).
Online episodes with experts
The 3-week course brings
are combined with workshops
together students from diverse
in physical spaces. Students
educational backgrounds,
are encouraged to be active
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partners in the course creation by sharing their own insights and knowledge: through student input, the IDBM Challenge website will come alive as it continuously changes and expands.
As an introduction to the IDBM
Since 1995, IDBM has
Program, this course is crucial
delivered world-class
for teaching students about
multidisciplinary and systemic
multidisciplinary teamwork
education in global business
and establishing a strong
development through
sense of inclusive community.
design and technology. The
The coursework supports
International Design Business
the idea that learning takes
Management (IDBM) program
place at individual, team and
is a joint offering between
community levels. Through the
the Aalto University School of
IDBM Challenge, students are
Art, Design, and Architecture,
reminded to enjoy and have fun
School of Science and School
on their development journey.
of Business.
IDBM CHALLENGE IN A NUTSHELL The IDBM Challenge is the introductory course for new Master students of the Aalto University’s multidisciplinary IDBM Program (International Design Business Management)
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This 3-week course was taught
Learning (A!OLE) initiative: a
in autumn 2017. In this first
strategic program aimed at
iteration of the course, IDBM
transforming learning and
was working with Space
teaching in Aalto University.
Nation and a host of other organizations to deliver a
In total, 52 students took this
space-related challenge with a
course: 47 by attending the
societal angle.
workshops and organizing the final event, and five by taking
What made this course
this course independently.
unique, among other
What is more, out of the 47
things, was that it combined
students, we had six students
challenge-based and blended
from Student & Innovation
learning to create a learning
House in Copenhagen,
space that catered to the
Denmark remotely
students’ needs. We started
participating in the first two
with a simple vision – how
weeks after which they joined
could the future of learning
the teams in Helsinki for the
look like – and this course
final week. This diversity in the
would not have been possible
student body illustrates that
without the generous help of
the course can be taken in
Aalto University’s Aalto Online
diverse ways and locations.
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Since IDBM Challenge is the introductory course to the IDBM program, the learning outcomes focus on multidisciplinary teamwork: Understanding the dynamics between the individual, the team, and the community. This will be based on readings, exercises during the class, as well as individual and team assignments.
Apply the skills you learn and practice through readings, talks, and exercises to propose your solution to the challenge
Analyze the current situation and in multidisciplinary teams connect the present state of things with how you envision the world.
In multidisciplinary teams, learn to apply designdriven methods and processes to create a solution to a pressing societal challenge.
PHILOSOPHY BEHIND THE DESIGN OF IDBM CHALLENGE As mentioned in the section previously, IDBM Challenge was a challenge-based blended course that combined various methods and technologies to create an engaging and inspiring environment for the students. More specifically, the course integrated elements from game design to create a gameful learning experience.
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The table below further fleshes out this philosophy.
GAME DESIGN ELEMENT
PEDAGOGICAL ELEMENT
Context
Mindset
Learning space, both digital
Learning a new way to learn:
and physical
not finding the right answers,
Frames the course through
but crafting the right questions
the learning outcomes
Learning in teams while at the same time reflecting on one’s
Meaning Supports active and
own learnings
embodied learning
Process
Creating engaging course
Meaningfully connecting the
content
course contents Process provides the students
Participants Situates the facilitators and the students as co-
with psychological safety to broaden their horizon
creators of meaning
Method
Facilitators provide the
Diverse methods to support
skeleton (i.e. learning
learning also outside classroom
outcomes) while the
Open-ended methods that help
students create the
students create meaningful
experience
learning
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As the table above illustrates, IDBM Challenge would not have been anything without active participation from the students. This does not mean that we as facilitators outsource content creation to the students, but instead we invite them as co-creators to the course. This kind of approach is relatively common in games: although a game might still be a game even if no one played it, it becomes a meaningful experience only when someone is playing the game. Thus, by referring to this kind of approach to course design as gameful learning we are departing from gamification that is often connected to competition, scoreboards, and collecting badges. In the next section, we will further elaborate how we made this philosophy concrete through IDBM Challenge.
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Three examples of teaching methods
COURSE DESIGN COOKING SLAM
THE NEXT ERA S CARDS
N CARDS
SCANNING
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Course Design cards for online and blended learning What are the elements
know works and to get that
that you need to consider
additional push to try something
when designing an online
new sometimes demands
or blended learning course?
us to challenge our thinking.
This set of analog cards was
We created this method to
created to help anyone who
challenge ourselves in our
is running a course with
course design decisions as well
planning, developing and
discovering and mapping out
prototyping new or existing
the additional opportunities and
online courses. This method
constraints when designing for
was designed with the intent
blended learning.
to help structure the course and discover the potential gaps in a course design. The set of cards has seven When designing a course it’s
categories and each category
easy to build on previous
has multiple choices with a
experiences and what we
descriptive text.
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What learning theory will your
When it comes to content
course be based on?
production, which online tools
Perhaps Constructivism or
and techniques will you use?
Connectivism?
Webinars, wiki, blogs, quizzes, podcasts?
What learning approach will you take, perhaps case-based
How about monetization, are
learning or challenge-based
you aiming to generate profit
learning?
and if so what is the business model? Selling additional
Which instructional methods
content, selling certificates,
will you use? Perhaps peer
subscription?
teaching or demonstration? How will you market your What is the course frame? Will
course? Through teaser
your course be a self-paced or
content, high-profile people,
instructor-paced?
social media?
Which platform will you select? A commercial MOOC or will you create your own platform?
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Cooking slam and strategizing The two-day cooking slam
process literally into a
was dedicated to introduce
cooking process. The
different strategizing
students gathered in an
approaches of companies, and
event space where we had
how these approaches affect
divided them into teams
their potential innovation
that each would occupy one
level. Extant research suggests
cooking station. On each
four strategizing types that
station, we had arranged
are based on prediction and
seeminly odd combinations
control parameters. Within
of groceries. During the
that context, we emphasized
cooking slam, the students
the control-driven effectuation
had to follow the illustrated
process, that is characteristic
cooking process within a
for innovation and
predetermined time frame,
entrepreneurial activities.
using all the provided ingredients and team skills
For the slam, we translated
to create an entrĂŠe, main
and illustrated the effectuation
course, or dessert. Next
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to the pre-set groceries on each station, one common “opportunity table� offered additional, culinary choices to refine the cooking creations. The final creations and team experiences were throughout inspiring and truly formidable.
On the second day, we stepped back into a theoretical session where we connected the dots between the cooking slam and the different strategizing approaches of companies. Here, the students discovered diverse theoretical frameworks and reflected on corresponding cooking scenarios.
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The Next Era Scanning Cards Miikka participated in
by Sitra and Demos Helsinki)
developing the first iteration
to utilize their findings as the
of the scanning cards at
basis for the scanning cards,
The University of Tokyo’s
and as a result we created a
multidisciplinary i.school unit,
deck of cards that contains
but the scanning method
thirty cards dealing with
itself was created at Stanford
contemporary phenomena. In
Research Institute in the
short, The Next Era Scanning
1960s. Initially the purpose
Cards are utilized to create
of this method was to help in
future scenarios through a
creating future scenarios, and
process that can last between
at i.school we utilized them
three to eight hours. Ideally,
in shifting young researchers’
this process involves three to
mindset from past and present
five people in one team, but
to present and future (without
other setups are also feasible.
ignoring the historical legacy!).
However, what makes this
We teamed up with The Next
method interesting is what
Era initiative (jointly organized
happens after the scenarios
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have been created (we
instead the aim is to help
instructed teams to come up
the participants become
with one to three scenarios).
more aware of how changes
As such, these scenarios are
today have an impact on
rather generic, taking place
future societies.
five to twenty years from now, but when combined with a specific domain is where the magic happens. For example, if a scenario portrays a society where robots take care of all the mundane jobs, how does this influence HR practices in firms, for example. Or what will happen to labour unions? Thus, two insights are worth noting here: first, the method itself is highly modular, and second, this method is not about creating ‘accurate’scenarios, but
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EXECUTING IDBM CHALLENGE Below, we will describe what kind of actions were taken before, during, and after the course. All the actions points listed below were either directly or indirectly contributing to the broader vision mentioned above, namely: how could the future of learning look like. Please bear in mind, however, that the lists below are by no means allexhaustive nor should they be followed blindly. The purpose here is to merely provide you with food for thought.
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BEFORE THE COURSE Find the team Once we got the funding decision, and actually slightly before that, we had discussed this course with some people who would later on become seminal in realizing and contributing to the vision. In the end, we had a team of almost ten people contributing to the course: some were full-time, some did a teaching gig, others designed the audio identity for the course. Regardless of the size of the team, during the setup phase of IDBM Challenge we realized there are so many talented individuals working and / or studying at Aalto University. As facilitators of the course, we met numerous people in connection to this course, and our task was to understand how all these experts could work together to produce a coherent experience.
Online episodes and podcasts Our first episodes (first season consists of fifteen episodes) were shot between May and August, and this was perhaps the most time-consuming part of the course prior to its start. Basically, the setup for shooting the episodes consisted of one or two interviewers, one or two cameramen, and the interviewee, but
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usually two people from the crew shot one episode. Prior to filming the episodes, the teaching team listed a number of experts we would like to interview, after which we created a shortlist and started contacting people. Once the episodes were filmed, each episode was edited according to the interviewer’s vision, and on average the episodes lasted between thirty to sixty minutes. Podcasts (three in total), on the other hand, were all recorded and edited by the teaching team.
Partners Once the funding decision was announced, the teaching team started to reach out to potential partners in and outside Aalto University. What kind of resources and tools do we already have in Aalto? What kind of services or expertise do we require from external partners? Questions like these were guiding us in pitching our course to potential partners and creating that course pitch, as well.
Teaching methods Most of the teaching methods we utilized in IDBM Challenge were already tested elsewhere, but some methods we had
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to improve / tweak to better fit our needs. Since most of our teaching content is freely available online, we also ended up releasing one of the teaching methods on our course website together with an instructional video on how to use the method. We decided to release this method freely because it was based on an existing method: hopefully someone finds the method useful and ends up developing it further.
Workshop locations Since IDBM Challenge was the first course in the program, and most of our students come from outside Helsinki, we wanted to host our workshops in diverse locations in and outside Aalto University. This is something we did a couple of months prior to the course.
Setting up live streaming Since two of our teams were following the course remotely from Denmark during the first two weeks of the course, we had to make sure we could live stream our lectures and talks. In some of the workshop locations streaming was relatively easy, but in most places we had to bring our own cameras, laptops,
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and wireless microphones to make it happen. Luckily Aalto University has all of the aforementioned equipment so we only had to know where to find them.
T-shirts and tote bags We wanted to provide our students and partners with tangible memories of the course, which is why we ordered t-shirts and tote bags that were in line with the course’s visual identity from Pure Waste, a company producing sustainable clothing and accessories.
Creating the course universe One of the aims of IDBM Challenge was to try out different technologies that would support learning and teaching, and this was made possible by a mandate from Aalto University’s IT solutions for learning. In line with our audio-visual identity, we wanted to create a course space that would bring all the different components together as well as provide everyone a window to our activities.
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DURING THE COURSE Make sure the process flows smoothly Since IDBM Challenge was a 3-week intensive course, it was crucial that the process would flow smoothly. In practice this means ensuring everyone knows when and where the sessions are held, and that technology works as expected.
Improvise when necessary Perhaps contradicting the point above, but since we were dealing with an open-ended course (i.e. no one knew how the outputs would look like), being flexible with sudden changes or failures with technology was something we had to prepare ourselves for. Some of the students, for instance, were taking another course at the same time that overlapped with one of our sessions, and to resolve this issue we asked a company to record the other lecture so the students would not have to move between two locations.
Teaching team’s reflection sessions We hosted reflection sessions for the students each week, but equally importantly the teaching team also convened briefly
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after each day to discuss the course progress and how the students were feeling about the workload and the instructions we provided them with.
Being available for the students Since a major part of the course took place outside the classroom hours, we made sure we were available for the students throughout the course. Within reasonable hours.
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AFTER THE COURSE Reflect, and then reflect some more
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In addition to all courserelated administrative issues (e.g. grading, returning all the equipment we
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borrowed), we cannot emphasize the importance of reflections.
H C TA
W FA
WHAT WORKED?
WHAT DID NOT WORK?
HOW DO WE DEVELOP THE COURSE NEXT TIME IT IS AUGHT?
WHAT DID WE AS ACILITATORS LEARN?
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REFLECTIONS: WHAT WORKED, WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED
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Miikka
: Any thoughts on your mind right now? How did IDBM challenge change you?
Katharina : I’m not sure if it is valuable for the reader because they might be on their own planning a course, but even though there were discussions and conflict moments or whatever, it was super fun to be positive about whatever would happen. We kind of trusted the flow. The students would be really good, and they were. We gave the students right away a positive character, a positive attitude in the course. Miikka
: That’s a good point.
Theresa
: When I think back about the course now I think mostly about the vibe of the students, and how they were eager to take on this challenge and to learn. I think the high energy was there. I think one thing that we did, which I thought wasn’t intentional on our part, but I think the students noticed that we had put a lot of effort into this course, and in return I think the students felt that “We should also put the effort in.” I mean the students themselves.
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Katharina : And I think anyway team dynamics is always a bit like a surprise box, what do you get at the end out of there? And we were lucky that the students really caught the momentum and started doing things. Miikka
: Yeah, and this connects to how you think about blended or online learning. I do not think it is really about making things easier for everyone: it’s more about engaging in a different way and coming up with new things and a new way to reach people.
Katharina : Exactly. The episodes and all the other material we had was actually understandable or traceable even though you are not in the context. You could watch an episode and it is like a separate series or separate episode which helps with some things, so you do not need the entire lecture context. It’s quite modular. Theresa
: Should we talk about what we think went good and how we would redesign the course?
Miikka
: Maybe in the beginning would have been nice to say, “Hey, since we do not really know what is the outcome, we only have a structure, but then we have certain level of freedom or flexibility.” Like openly communicate
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with the students. Theresa
: I think more clarity in why we did what we did, why we gave them the freedom we gave them, why we gave them the structure. This is the interesting part because even in the beginning when we started this course, we made it also quite explicit that we really need to communicate the learning outcomes of each session. But still, we were not able to overtly be that explicit. I think one learning, for me at least, was this there is no such thing as over communication when it comes to clarifying the learning goals, what the purpose is of the tasks or the exercises.
Katharina : That is one point, and the students also have to learn how to deal with ambiguity. In my startup, we also have no timetable that tells us when we have to be where, and I think university is just the same thing just in a safer environment. Theresa
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Yeah, but you know you do not have a schedule. Maybe some of these students also kind of expected to somehow get that structure, but did not get it and that felt a bit insecure perhaps.
Katharina : Yeah, good point.
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Theresa
: By the way, there is actually some research on learning about this; that it is actually a physically painful process because you disrupt your thought patterns. Oh, wow.
Theresa
: To learn is actually painful.
Katharina : You rip off your hair. Theresa
: Yeah, so it is not a pleasant thing, but you also need to be able to challenge yourself. That is also a pleasure, but there is pain also involved.
Miikka
: Hey, Katharina, you were talking about your startup. What is the name of the startup?
Katharina : Portyr. Miikka
: What about the website?
Katharina : Portyr.com. Miikka
: Okay. Some free advertising there. It is the same thing when you practice sports, for example, like when you need to practice a new skill. Not that learning takes place always in this step-wise manner, but it is still like when you try to practice a new move or whatever. It really takes a lot of time and then you need to have it in your muscle memory. But it takes a lot of time,
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so I can fully relate to that comment that learning is painful. That is why we had the gin Friday, I suppose. Katharina : But that is a good point, I think it is so important to have fun together and do nothing else but that. It is your life at the end no matter if you work or if you study, it is a big part of your life and you have got to choose how you fill that basket. Theresa
: We tend to think that we are learning when we are not. We tend to go to the same community that we are used to, the same conferences with like-minded people, and we think we are breaking ground by talking about things that we are comfortable talking. They can be complicated, but it might not be challenging. And I think with the students, I think what might cause friction in these multidisciplinary teams can be that there are some hurdles they need to go through, because they come from different backgrounds and nationalities, but at the same time they do have interest in the same things.
Miikka
: Yes, I think it goes back to this kind of empathy or empathic approach to living your life or having an empathic career. You accept and embrace diversity
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and divergent thinking. Not kind of diluting the solutions or that everyone is happy with like the lowest common denominator, but kind of seeing beauty in diversity. Theresa
: How do you think this course brought forward the empathy aspect?
Katharina : Empathy? Well, empathy is such a tacit asset, so it is really hard to catch it. That is also what many people say about IDBM: what I have learned is not so easy to write in one sentence. But I think it showed very much in the silent or small moments, like the group dynamic, how people supported each other when somebody had a problem, how they embraced each other or the failure CV, when people are able to just say, “Hey, my life was not perfect” then saying they see positive about that person, which is completely not in our society. Because usually you would go, “If I say now something positive he may be better off than me later.” That is so often the attitude in Western culture at least. People are basically always afraid to be a pinch behind and have to admit that somebody is good. Not always, but often.
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Theresa
: What do you think about the exercises we had when it comes to reflection days? Because we were very explicit, again, with them acknowledging their team mates’ strengths.
Katharina : The sessions per se were not tacit, but they became tacit afterwards. Theresa
: Yes, yes.
Katharina : Firstly, I think the reflective sessions were super important, to actually think about what have you done and in which process are you, because that comes nearly always to mind. And I think also that influenced the learning diaries, because they were highly reflexive. When I was a student, I needed to have the summer break to actually reflect on what did I do last year. But these explicit exercises, many wrote in the diaries, they really mentioned them and they were memorisable for them. Miikka
: I have this feeling that when it comes to blended learning, so many people have tried it by kind of emulating what has been done so far in traditional classrooms, but it is not really about that. Mindset and empathy are crucial, and at the same time what
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you need to do is to create a completely new kind of lexicon or words to talk about this kind of learning, because you can not really talk about lectures, and I think that has been one of our learnings that hopefully paves way for other people. Because we did not have any kind of reference points, or did we? Theresa
: No, I think we did somewhat benchmarking, but there is not really a best practice when it comes to blended
Katharina : learning. And the fact that we also called our course “hybrid learning� because blended learning with all its requirements sounds a bit boxed. But okay, I have a question for you. Do you think you can make this course totally online? Could it serve the same purposes? Or would it be a different animal? Miikka
: But actually, when I think about the whole concept of online learning or ... I mean as long as we are present, as long as we have these physical bodies, like a human body, can learning be fully online, because we are also present ...
Theresa
: Okay, you are going meta now.
Katharina : I think we are almost too old to give the answer. Miikka
: Oh, hashtag lifelong learning.
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Katharina : Hashtag vision maker. Miikka
: Let me tweet that.
Katharina : Of course, with a background in architecture I say spaces, environments, they influence you immensely. I think this course from the first prototype it would have been only online, it would have been a completely different animal, and it would not have maybe even worked because we also began with so much experience in the first trial. In this case, I would say very different animal based on the learnings we have. If you reshape the sessions and you would go more into a gaming theory ... Because if you see, for example, how kids or students or even adults glue onto some games, they spend their days and nights in front of a computer and they build a complete community and they are really supporting each other. There is a digital community, which is maybe they might never meet, but they are still a community. If this community has the same values or ethical background or standards as a physical community, that is another question, but I would claim with some more experience you
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could create a great online only course. Theresa
: Nice.
Miikka
: And I think within this game space there is a perspective that a game is a space detached from the
Katharina : real life in a way, and once you are in that space you can do things in a bit different way. You can be like someone else, but still you have the connection to who you are. As long as you are in the game space you kind of have the freedom to talk to strangers, even though you might be an introvert, because the game tells you to do that. Theresa
: In this course, we have put a lot of emphasis on teamwork, and actually for the students to be more conscious about the challenges and the opportunities regarding multidisciplinary teamwork. But if it were a completely online course, could that transfer even though you would have individuals in different parts of the world? Can you do teamwork from afar in the same way? And throughout this course we had quite structured social events throughout these weeks where they got to know each other outside the learning environment.
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Miikka
: Maybe this is the old generation talking, but communities today are not bound by physical limitations. Like Minecraft is a fantastic example. People are playing Minecraft and streaming that on YouTube and Twitch, and other people are watching and learning things and they are like, “Oh, cool, you like this as well?� And they might not even once meet face to face.
Theresa
: Maybe the problem is that when you phrase it as a course you have such stigmas attached to it.
Katharina : Exactly, and it is really about the values I want to provide the students with. You can have an impact to some extent. We also just gave what we assumed would be the right thing. Theresa
: Agree.
Katharina : Yeah. Miikka
: It was really nice to see all those episodes, the ones where I was not present like with Alf, for example, or Esa and all those. It was so much fun. And I do not know if you heard about this but close to the end of the year Kalle was going through all those episodes, and he was like binge watching them just like you
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would do on Netflix. Katharina : He sent me a message and was like, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Episode something <3â&#x20AC;?, I forgot already which episode it was. He is such an awesome guy. Theresa
: Yeah, after all that editing he still had the slightest interest to watch it again.
Miikka
: Yeah, exactly. That is actually something that maybe I would have done differently or like be well ahead of time with the episodes.
Theresa
: Yeah. I think we were all at the time optimistic when it comes to this.
Katharina : Also, because we just did not know at the beginning exactly how much all of this would take. It was also kind of an ambiguous challenge to us. Theresa
: I think one thing when it comes to blended learning or hybrid learning or however we want to call it, is to think about how lean do we want to be: when to put in high production value in what we do, and when is it enough to have a semi-crappy video? I am just putting it out there.
Miikka
: Well, think about Blair Witch Project that had like a super small production budget, but it is all about
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the story. What is the story you want to tell and what is the medium? It is just about having a clear vision, what do you want to achieve, and then what kind of tools do you need to make that happen. And hopefully when people read this report they go like, “I can do it by myself, I do not need to have an army of people”. Theresa
: Yeah. Okay, what would you do better next time?
Miikka
: Maybe I would have a script for each of the episodes, just to have a better understanding or like what do we want to cover in each episode? It is a really small thing.
Theresa
: No, that’s a fair point. I think being a bit clearer with the students as well as what is going to happen and why, mostly why, so they feel safe with the uncertainty and explain why, subject them to the ambiguity. But I think also the workload might have been a bit heavy, which made the episodes perhaps feel a bit like a source of stress for them. But actually, I talked to IDBM students from the previous year, asking them about what they thought about that year in IDBM. One thing that I remember really clearly was
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that they said they wanted to be more challenged, which was quite interesting. Miikka
: Yeah.
Theresa
: And I think we pushed these students quite a bit.
Miikka
: Yeah, you could say that.
Theresa
: Yeah. And I think that is something that we should not lose the next time, because I think starting a new program you are filled with energy. Now, of course, it was a perhaps a bit unbalanced because some students had already started before and had like a heavy introduction, but most of the students kind of came with the energy that they really wanted something juicy to bite. I think there is something there that keeping up the momentum is really important in these courses, and giving the students the challenge. But maybe we gave them too much workload, we gave them too many things that they should execute or take part of. I do not know, what do you think? Do you agree?
Katharina : Yeah, I firstly agree on the schedule and it should be simply with digestible milestones. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is what we do, this is why we do itâ&#x20AC;?, just because it makes life
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easier for them, but it is still ambiguous in the end. That’s about structure and being driven, and psychological safety is also crucial; that they know how to develop it or that they also know how to create it for themselves. So what Esa and Emilia, for example, were talking about in their respective episodes: how to create a safe environment for others. Miikka
: That is awesome. Okay. Anything else?
Katharina : The students who complained that IDBM was not challenging enough, they had, for example, Miikka’s course in the beginning and they were a really good cohort. For them of course it was easy to go through IDBM because they just had a great team. But then there were years when there was not a good team spirit, and for them everything was challenging because you just could not collaborate properly. And really to create this strong mindset, like “Hey, whatever challenge comes, we are a good team, we can handle this”. That is maybe one of the core learnings for me.
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WAY FORWARD:
HOW DOES THE FUTURE OF LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION LOOK LIKE?
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We wrote this report as a sort of reflexive sensemaking artefact for IDBM Challenge, the introductory course for Aalto Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s IDBM program combining challenge-based and blended learning. One of the ideas here is to inspire other academics to try out new teaching methodologies by helping them avoid the pitfalls that we experienced during our journey, and at the same time the purpose here is to generate discussion on the future of learning and teaching in higher education institutions. At this point, we would like to focus on four aspects of learning that, we believe, will come to shape higher education: from teachers to co-creators, unrestricted learning, actionable content over medium, and learningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new lexicon.
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From teachers to co-creators of immersive experiences: teacher-centric classroom as a concept has been under attack for a while now, and although lecturing does serve certain purposes, we need to develop other, complementary teaching approaches that support studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; active learning. One of the challenges we are currently facing is that universities are seen as entities separate from the rest of the society in which they are embedded, and here challenge-based blended learning can bring universities back to the society. From the instructor, this indicates a shift from being a teacher to becoming a cocreator of immersive experiences. Teacher is no longer solely responsible what their students learn and when, but students also actively participate in shaping their learning experience. Immersive experience, in this context, refers to the ability to create such a learning space that does not feel separate from the society while at the same time promoting active learning through collaborative efforts.
Unrestricted learning: somewhat connected to the previous point, students do not stop learning when they leave the classroom. This per se is nothing revelatory, but
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from a universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perspective this requires creating new teaching methods and tactics. For example, some of our students mentioned they enjoyed listening to the podcasts we had created while they were jogging, commuting, or doing household chores. Coupled with insights from our studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; learning diaries, we can argue that universities should be actively speaking for lifelong learning. Hence, unrestricted learning in this context refers to universities creating learning opportunities for their students wherever and whenever.
Actionable content over medium: majority of contemporary technological innovations in the field of education focus on scalable content, but does this necessarily imply that the content is engaging? In our opinion, this is one of the pitfalls in the current educational technology hype: although providing quality education for everyone is a just cause, it is somewhat questionable whether this technology fetish actually creates transformative learning experiences. As we realized during IDBM Challenge, technology and different medium need to support the learning objectives, not vice
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versa. Asking yourself ‘why do we need this technology or software in this pedagogical context?’ enables you to reflect on the purpose and role technology has in teaching and education.
Learning’s new lexicon: finally, since we are talking about a revolution in teaching and learning in higher education, we also need to create new words to better describe learning and its all aspects. So far the way we talk about blended and online learning has emulated ‘traditional’ learning, but cognitively connecting them prevents us from creating novel and perhaps radical pedagogical innovations. We are not arguing for a full departure from the past: all the learning theories and philosophies serve as a good springboard for both revising them by studying new ways and spaces of learning and creating legitimate content. Above, we have attempted to flesh out several new terms, but it is up to us all across academic disciplines to collectively come up with a new lexicon. This way we are able to better understand what kind of skills and competencies are required from the facilitators as well as effectively transform teaching and learning in higher education.
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PARTNERS Demos Microsoft MOW Nokia Sitra Space Nation
FUNDERS & SUPPORTERS: A!OLE Kaute foundation Aalto University strategic digitalization project
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Miikka J. Lehtonen, Visiting Assistant Professor Theresa Berg, Education Designer Katharina Schilli, Education Designer Andreas Kristian Gjede, Education Designer Kalle Kataila, Educational Media Specialist Johannes Sรถderstrรถm, VR Consultant Harri Dammert, Audio Design Parvati Pillai, Visual Designer Jessie Cat, Copywriter Paul D. Savage, Guest Lecturer
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Innovation thrives when multiple disciplines and design practices converge.