Best practices
From Classroom to Collaboratorium: Rethinking Learning Spaces in European Joint Masters
Users: Training Providers (Private), Training Providers (Public) | Theme: Programme Development | Action: Education programme/course | Beneficiaries: Learners (STEM background), Learners (Non-STEM background).
In international joint master studies, students/learners and educators are inherently spread over different locations and countries. Only remote/online teaching is not a good educational approach. Community formation through in-person and face-to-face contact and collaborative work are also needed, and must be blended with remote virtual components.
Students with different educational backgrounds, from different institutions, countries and cultures, collaborate in challenge-based master-level research and educational projects for societal impact. Building a community of learners is key to successful learning.
The challenge?
How can we build and educate young professionals to be both skilled and reflective for the Digital Society?
How should these innovative curricula look like?
How can we give our students a sense of belonging to a group, in an international, digitally connected context?
How can we avoid that every student is working together while being alone behind their computer screen?
Our solution
Our proposed solution was coined: Collaboratorium. This is both a hybrid digital/physical interconnected workspace, and an educational concept. It combines onsite in-presence classrooms and workspaces, connected via digital collaboration bridges.
In a Collaboratorium approach students tackle real-world “wicked” problems and work in small interdisciplinary, and often transdisciplinary teams, in the design of socio-technical solutions, through user-centered and community-centered approaches.
Outcomes
What have we already achieved through the implementation of the educational concept of the Collaboratorium?
To gain and share experiences with this innovative educational concept, EURIDICE partners have implemented a series of pilots, through master projects.
All projects embody the societally-oriented ambitions and are related to the Sustainable Development Goals.
The idea is to co-design and build digital, socio-technical solutions for real world problems formulated with partners in the Global South. Our SME consortium partners are co-supervising a number of these projects, related to food security, health and wellbeing, and adaptation to climate change.
Preliminary outcomes, as of 1 February 2025: 15 master theses, produced through this educational concept.
Key takeaways
- Virtual education is efficient to train people remotely, however, presential collaboration is important for human well-being and enhances learning capacity and creativity.
- We advise to design your education such that groups are together in one space, while virtually communicating with other groups who are remote.
- A Collaboratorium requires a careful design of both physical spaces, digital international collaboration tools, and virtual spaces in an integrated whole.