by Gunter Bombaerts, TU/e
TU/e recently tested co-creative learning in a first year’s compulsory ethics course. Gunter Bombaerts (TU/e) presented this approach at the annual conference CDIO (Conceiving — Designing — Implementing — Operating) on June, 24th in 2019.
TU/e recently tested co-creative learning in a first year’s compulsory ethics course for engineers. In the experiment, 180 students received a “real-life” ethical challenge from a co-creation stakeholder. Students worked for 8 weeks in a flipped classroom context and co-created an end product in groups of 5 together with the stakeholder. (Find much more about this ethics course here.)Although detailed analysis has to be performed, first results are very promising. First of all, quality of the student work increased. Secondly, whereas the previous years reached an overall student course evaluation of 5.5 on a 10-point Likert scale, the results now show a huge increase to 7.5.
Gunter Bombaerts presented this co-creative learning approach at the CDIO annual conference in Aarhus. CDIO is an innovative educational framework for producing the next generation of engineers.“The framework provides students with an education stressing engineering fundamentals set in the context of Conceiving — Designing — Implementing — Operating (CDIO) real-world systems and products. Throughout the world, CDIO Initiative collaborators have adopted CDIO as the framework of their curricular planning and outcome-based assessment.” Co-creative education fits well in this approach. It brings Conceiving — Designing — Implementing — Operating also into ethics courses. The reaction from the participants from 5 continents was very positive. The working group decided to jointly implement successful educational approaches to support its upscaling.