Creative and Design Thinking MOOC Erasmus Project

Project Title

Creative and Design Thinking MOOC

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education; Overcoming skills mismatches (basic/transversal); Open and distance learning

Project Summary

NEEDS ANALYSIS
Effective education and training are the foundations to support growth and employment. The nature of jobs is also invariably changing towards the use of digital technology, requiring for people’ skills and aptitudes to be entrepreneurial, manage complex information, think autonomously and creatively, use resources, including digital ones, smartly, communicate effectively and be resilient.
Higher Education system in Europe is facing those challenges. The skilled force of Europe does not necessarily meet the skills Europe needs. There is a certain mismatch as many graduates lack good basic skills and highly skilled positions are facing a shortage. The innovation gap between higher education institutions and their community is growing. Cooperation with schools, vocational providers and adult learning often remains limited.

REASON FOR THE PROPOSAL
The elements the proposal is based on are:
– Develop, test, adapt and implement innovative practices, creative and disruptive approaches and methodologies in the educational system thanks to alternative and successful methodologies and approaches such as Creative Problem Solving, Design Thinking and Human-Centered Design, in order to create a novel system aimed at entrepreneurship-oriented learning: the partners are aware of the lack of an effective system to transfer knowledge and provide learners of skills necessary for self-employment as start-upper or employment
– The strong design of products, services and value are essential to successful enterprises

The PROJECT PROPOSAL is about:
– the building up of a MOOC platform integrated with strong elements of gamification of learning in a free online course to anyone is interested to discover interesting emerging opportunities from a creative and design thinking approach;
– provide some GUIDES about effective methodologies;
– produce some REPORTS about the real needs in terms of innovation in the market and successful cases in European entrepreneurship.

OUTPUTS/RESULTS
The project aims to:
• Explore and discover from across EU successful GOOD PRACTICE examples about innovation in enterprises coming from Creative and Designed Thinking implementation in Europe;
• Produce an EVIDENCE-GATHERING report starting from the emerging needs analysis done by a FOCUS GROUPS via INTERVIEWS (stakeholders from SME, University, students, VET sector) and aimed to the emersion of the needs in terms of education and learning for students, teachers, wanna-be startuppers, VET providers, entrepreneurs (including SME) looking for opportunities for growth;
• Promote the development, testing and implementation of INNOVATIVE PRACTICES/METHODOLOGIES thanks to SEVERAL GUIDES and a MOOC platform focused on: Creative Problem Solving, Design Thinking, Human-Centered Design and on sectorial modules about interesting entrepreneurship opportunities e.g. European Cultural Heritage, Social Entrepreneurship, Glocal development and FabLab
• Stimulate a change in the Educational System coming from innovative and disruptive METHODOLOGIES and APPROACHES
• Transfer the knowledge about the METHODOLOGIES through a series of GUIDES (in digital format and published on ISSUU platform)
• Explore the challenge and opportunities from successful European enterprises thanks to a CASES ANALYSIS REPORT
• Create a WEBSITE integrated with Wiki, Blog and Social Networks containing a DATABASE OF MATERIALS TRANSLATED into all partners’ National languages to promote and encourage extensive exploitation and dissemination
• Disseminate the project outputs and results throughout the EU with a database of OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES available through open licences
• Arrange a series of MULTIPLIER EVENTS involving a large number of stakeholders to foster exploitation and dissemination of PROJECT Intellectual Outputs.
• Create a professional profile for project partners’ staff as “European Expert in CREATIVE AND DESIGN THINKING”.

IMPACT ENVISAGED
The partnership will bring together partners coming from several countries and their stakeholders, both academic and private, with the synergic power to reach a very large and diverse audience.

The double-route to follow in the project is:
– Transfer innovative and disruptive methodologies/approaches to:
• Actual Students: to enrich and update the knowledge with interesting topics complementary to their own study pathway
• Future Students: to attract students to the HE system by providing for free innovative methodologies in a gamified environment
• Former Students: to update the knowledge with fresh perspectives coming from live cases but also to discover how to use new methodologies to create successful enterprises
•Start-uppers, business sector, accelerators and incubators and all SME: interested in new perspectives and approaches useful to survive and adapt the enterprises.
– Recognise and validate the knowledge within partner staff to create a new profile of “European Expert in CREATIVE AND DESIGN THINKING”.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 292181 Eur

Project Coordinator

TURUN YLIOPISTO & Country: FI

Project Partners

• SUCCUBUS INTERACTIVE SARL
• MIDSTOD SIMENNTUNAR A SUDURNESJUM
• Art Square Lab SARL-S
• EURO-NET