Ref. Code: WS07
Chair: Linette Bossen and Saskia Postema
Duration: 2h
Organization: Delft University of Technology
The urgent sustainability challenges that students are expected to solve or cope with in the future require holistic interventions. We developed learning communities as part of a wider ecosystem to offer our students the opportunity to collaborate, learn and innovate on equal footing with all sorts of knowledge partners. Involvement from applied sciences and vocational education students, as well as private sector, government, and citizens ensures that they experience the complexity of the real world. Our workshop consists of a simulation game that walks participants through the process of setting up a learning ecosystem on climate action education.
The urgent sustainability challenges that students are expected to solve or cope with in the future require holistic interventions. However, current modes of higher education do not sufficiently prepare students for actioning their knowledge in such a way. We developed learning communities as part of a wider ecosystem to offer our students the opportunity to collaborate, learn and innovate on equal footing with all sorts of knowledge partners. Involvement from applied sciences and vocational education students, as well as private sector, government, and citizens ensures that they experience the complexity of the real world and can put technology in a wider societal context. Imperative to this are the development of green transformative skills (Kwauk & Casey, 2021), and a cross-boundary identity. Our workshop consists of a simulation game that walks participants through the process of setting up a learning ecosystem on climate action education, building on our experience with implementing co-creation and co-design (De Hei & Audenaerde, 2023; Smeenk, Koppchen & Gene, 2020). Participants will experience the various requirements, steps, and challenges that one may face when wanting to set up a dynamic learning ecosystem that includes all sustainability stakeholders. Step into the world of vocational education, industry, public entities, NGOs and civil society, and form your own working ecosystem.
Participants will experience the various requirements, steps, and challenges one may face when setting up a dynamic learning ecosystem that includes all sustainability stakeholders. We focus on the role of the facilitator, on stimulating learning, working and innovating together, creating an equal opportunity to learn and bring in new knowledge, and how to take time to find the shared urgencies and objectives, and embrace the complexity and leave room for redefining questions or desired outcomes.
As LEAF is built on the idea of forming transdisciplinary, multilevel, meaningful partnerships, we would like to reach a diverse audience that reflects plural perspectives on climate and sustainability in society. There is no required level of background knowledge because LEAF should be accessible by design and is all about defining the scope of knowledge building blocks together. As it is a role-playing game, participants will be asked to step into the shoes of ‘missing’ perspectives and receive the required information to portray the role accurately. This in and of itself will already challenge participants to break their own bubble and look at an issue in a different light. We see our approach as a way to mitigate the disconnect between the global and local level of sustainability knowledge and interventions, so we’d love to have non-Dutch participants.
We do hope to see a lot of interest in the workshop, but would assume a cap of 20 participants to ensure we can satisfactorily facilitate the group process.
Project lead Learning Communities for campus education and Life Long Learning at TU Delft. She is projectleader of the projects of Energytransition – Talent Learning Communities and Streetwise learning with society. The starting point of the approach of Learning Communities is society at large with its challenges and where technological solutions no longer stand alone. By arranging education around society complex challenges, students with different backgrounds meet each other in a transdisciplinary context and can learn equal together with stakeholders and citizens. Linette has a background in pedagogy and education policy, and has been with Delft University of Technology since 2018. Within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, she was project leader of the development of the new master’s in Robotics. This involved a so-called integrated curriculum where students are responsible for their own development and make independent choices a learning routes. Before that, Linette worked as an educationist at the University of Curacao. There, she steered the development of a teacher training programme (LOFO) with a focus on own identity.
Saskia Postema is currently employed at Delft University of Technology as Project Manager Challenge Based Education. In this role, she has been project lead for the City Deal Kennis Maken Delft, a local consortium of vocational education, applied sciences and university institutions in Delft, with the purpose of having students co-create knowledge with Delft communities that is relevant to the city (and beyond). She is also involved in Streetwise: Learning with Society; a TU Delft-based project that she coordinates together with Linette. Here, students work on societal challenges together with a wider learning community as well, though this is not bound to Delft alone. She also works with the Teaching Academy, the network of educators across the university, researching challenge-based education efforts and assessment strategies. Previously, she worked at Leiden University, Netherlands as a junior lecturer on security.
Delft University of Technology