On a cool April afternoon, seven STS scholars joined their students to offer them a unique course on co-creation, along with the opportunity to study real European cases, and practice co-creation themselves.
On the 14th of April, an online course took place with 30 Master’s students from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and Imperial College London (Imperial), led by the SCALINGS consortium, the results of which led to an engaged learning experience for all involved.
This unique combination came together to launch SCALINGS’ co-created course about co-creation and its European application. The cool April weather didn’t dampen the energy brought in by the participants to the online setting. After months of planning, hour-long team meetings, dense discussions, and at least 75 cups of coffee, Sebastian Pfotenhauer (TUM), Benjamin Lipp (TUM), Carlos Cuevas (TUM), Giovanni Viscusi (Imperial), Federica Pepponi (TUM), Anja Rueß (TUM), Julia Renninger (TUM), Carmen Bozga (TUM), Manuel Jung (TUM) and Jenny Graner (TUM), came together to collaboratively teach a new course.
This course offers students the opportunity to read and discuss Science and Technology Studies (STS) theory and apply these theoretical learnings to actual co-creation innovation projects that took place across Europe, specifically in the areas of healthcare and infrastructure robotics, urban energy planning and execution, and autonomous driving. Through dynamic and interactive digital teaching methods, these students will continue to receive insider glances into how innovative processes function in the European social and political context, as they explore their own position on co-creation theory and its application. The course not only brings SCALINGS’ findings and experiences to the (virtual) classroom, but will also become a crucial element of a new EU project, BoostEuroTeQ. This project’s mission is to re-imagine engineering education at European Technical Universities through the lenses of responsible and innovative co-creation. The SCALINGS coordinator, Professor Sebastian Pfotenhauer is excited about the launch and confident that, over time, the course will evolve into an ongoing international collaborative initiative for more students, not only at TUM and Imperial, but at more universities across Europe.
You can find out more about TUM and Imperial’s collaboration here.
Authors: Jenny Graner & Carlos Cuevas