INCREDIT project has received funding from the European Union’s EIT HEI research and innovation programme under grant agreement.
PROJECT REF.: 3113-A2308 HEI IVAP
Interdisciplinary Creative Education in Deep Tech
INCREDIT aims to make deep tech more approachable for both students and educators across Europe, creating more opportunities for students to connect with the deep tech sector, supporting deep-tech start-ups, and driving innovation within the field.
Experiential and problem-based learning are central to the mission and goals of INCREDIT. Problem-based learning (PBL) is a form of experiential learning, where students work in teams to solve real-world challenges. In PBL, a group of students are assigned a real-world and ill-structured problem, and students must work together to develop a solution. The work is largely self-directed and reflexive, requiring students to engage in “collaborative elaboration and questioning”. In large part due to this student-centred approach, PBL has been shown to stimulate learning, autonomy, and adaptability, as well as the development of problem-solving, research and collaboration skills.
By engaging in PBL, the consortium aims to introduce students of multiple backgrounds (both tech and non-tech) to deep tech organizations and the challenges they face. Through PBL, students and educators (taking on the role of ‘mentor’) engage deeply with deep tech, building knowledge through preparatory background research and first-hand engagement with project partners. PBL has been shown to create value for both students, in terms of skills and experience, and also for the industry partners as it can lead to changes, as well as innovation, in tools and practices used by the organization and strengthen connections to academic partners.
By connecting HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) practising experiential and interdisciplinary learning with industry partners and start-ups, INCREDIT develops knowledge and skills relevant to deep tech, bolstering the employment pool for the deep tech industry.
To meet these goals, INCREDIT has integrated four main approaches:
Interdisciplinary approach.
For many outside technical subjects, deep tech topics such as blockchain, AI and aerospace seem overly complex and unattainable. By utilizing a practice-based approach, INCREDIT aims to transform deep tech topics from buzzwords to practical and everyday tools for the students and educators engaged in these projects. Students will work with real-world industry partners to solve real-world challenges in the field, giving students the necessary confidence and experience to later work within deep tech topics. For those already in deep tech, inviting students to contribute through such PBL activities can provide new perspectives and the opportunity for creative exploration, leading to innovative ideas for processes, products, and applications.
PBL and practice-based approaches are not restricted to a single field or industry, but rather these methods find the most success when taking an interdisciplinary approach. This interdisciplinary approach is critical to INCREDIT’s philosophy and is reflected in the choice of HEI (Higher Education Institution) partners, including students from faculties of business (management, international business) engineering, informatics, information technology, and design. Including students from a range of subjects has a two-fold effect: (1) promoting deep tech to students that may otherwise have avoided the field, and (2) injecting new perspectives and ways of working into deep tech. For many students, deep tech may seem intimidating or even uninteresting. It has been shown that PBL can be an effective way to introduce students to unfamiliar topics, allowing them to engage with deep tech in the relative safety of a course and with a guiding mentor. Students will be explicitly told they do not need any background knowledge in deep tech, as PBL is intended to introduce new concepts.
Practice-based collaboration.
Throughout this problem-based and interdisciplinary process, educators will support students through design-oriented pedagogy. Design-oriented pedagogy includes the use of design thinking and relies on collaborative and student-led work, engaging with real-world phenomena. Students are encouraged to experiment using a human-centred approach: students work directly with end users to identify their needs and the client to ensure viability and feasibility. This collaboration continues through each iterative stage of ideation and prototyping. Design-driven approaches encourage finding new ways to solve complex problems. Design thinking requires empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism, and collaboration. The focus on the human aspect of the challenge often results in more ethical solutions. These solutions are not limited to products but can include processes, services, interactions, and ways of communicating. For deep tech, this can be beneficial as it may result in solutions that otherwise may not have emerged. Further, design-based approaches have already proved beneficial for businesses at both the strategic and operational levels.
As universities, we teach our students how to produce answers and solutions, but with an increasing interconnectedness and rate of change, it becomes more important to learn to work with people from multiple disciplines, and as a team ask the right questions, identify underlying problems, and then have the ability to re-frame them so that a new kind of solution can emerge. Trial-and-error experiments, uncertainty, ambiguity, fuzzy goals, and failed attempts are part of the process. Our students, as well as seasoned professionals in industry, therefore, need to learn to manage, rather than avoid, uncertainty, ambiguity, and failure. They need to learn how to not only develop Deep Tech-based solutions but also how to learn from failure and step-by-step understand stakeholders and define the problems that need solving and why. And they need to do so in a setting that is increasingly digital and online, be it prototyping or teamwork.
In this project, we hence build on our previous experience of such design-based innovation methods and challenge-based ways of organizing learning to encourage not only the increased awareness and understanding of Deep Tech, but also the mindset, methods, and ways of collaborating necessary to turn out innovations that are desirable and sustainable.
Life-wide learning opportunities.
Lifewide learning refers to the continuous process of learning that includes many forms of learning: formal, self-directed, intentional, and unintentional. Through this approach, INCREDIT can increase the number of people introduced to deep-tech settings. To survive the rapid transitions that are going on right now in Deep Tech areas such as AI and automation, we need new models for education where what students learn is more relevant for their later employment and where the possibility to re-learn, change direction, and build competence throughout a professional life is better supported. In particular, the goal for INCREDIT is to benchmark, understand and learn from its associated partner, Linköping University, as they have, over the past years, experimented with an ‘open’, work-integrated approach to education together with Saab, where students, researchers and practitioners come together in the same course, using a challenge, missions, and a project process as a vehicle of collaborative learning. Work conditions are realistic, and the initial brief contains a challenge, but no given solution to be developed, or requirements to work towards. The student course is open to industry practitioners who can take part in single workshops, book circles, or be shadow members in the student projects, or all the above, as part of their competence development. This means that students also get to collaborate, and co-create, with experienced industry practitioners.
For researchers, the project is a way to explore ideas while coaching and giving input as part of the teaching team, but also a possibility to collaborate with the industry sector in a more applied way.
For company liaisons who bring the ‘challenges,’ the project represents an opportunity to learn new methods, new ways of thinking, a chance to futureproofing development work by collaborating with students and researchers from around the world, but also a way to get new insights into what they are already developing and the possibility to see potential future employees in action.
A well-networked and integrated ecosystem.
A well-networked and integrated ecosystem aims to develop stronger relationships between INCREDIT and other knowledge triangle partners such as city/municipal organizations, research infrastructures, businesses, and other private organizations. In this regard, INCREDIT will be supported by its associated partners such as CERN, City of Espoo, Aalto Entrepreneurship Society (Aaltoes), Saab AB, Linköping University, and Finnish Venture Capital Association (FVCA).
Through the inclusion of CERN, we at INCREDIT aim to learn from one of the most prominent and largest deep-tech-oriented infrastructures within all of the EU. In particular, IdeaSquare at CERN is a well-renowned expert in demonstrating how deep-tech and innovation-oriented topics can be inculcated within educational offerings. Thus, all INCREDIT HEI Partners have a unique opportunity to learn from one of the leading research infrastructures about developing educational competencies within the deep-tech space.
INCREDIT capacitates the participating institutions, in collaboration with the network of associated partners, in pursuit of systematic institutional change and bringing solutions to societal challenges to the markets.
…Thanks, INCREDIT initiative
Through these approaches, educators play a significant role; this role, however, diverges from the traditional hierarchical relationship between students and teachers. In experiential, interdisciplinary and design-based work, educators serve as mentors, facilitators, and co-learners. Educators support the students through scaffolding; they guide students as they build knowledge until they can work on their own. Educators will work more closely with students than in a traditional teacher-student relationship; students are treated as equals and are encouraged to ask questions throughout the process. While challenging, educators’ role as mentors enables students to build greater competencies, experiment more freely outside the classroom, and build confidence in their abilities.
Finally, these educational approaches will be strengthened by the well-networked and integrated ecosystem that INCREDIT is built upon. Experiential and interdisciplinary educational activities will work directly with relevant deep tech partners. Additionally, ecosystem partners like CERN and the City of Espoo will offer the HEIs and their stakeholders the opportunity to learn more about deep tech and to connect with potential future employers. At the same time, students will learn about the needs of the market from these partners. Additionally, the promise of tangible outcomes of PBL-based projects will incentivize new partners and startups to join the ecosystem, as they may benefit from the students’ work.