Projektdetaljer

Beskrivelse

To thrive and tackle increasing complex challenges in an uncertain and rapidly changing world, requires cognitive flexibility, co-creation and news ways of thinking, including creative/divergent thinking, interdisciplinary and systems thinking, design thinking and future thinking (Lavi et al., 2021; Hansen & Bertel, 2023). However, while these different cognitive approaches are integral to problem-solving, they are not explicitly addressed in the current Aalborg PBL model, and rarely systematically developed or assessed as part of specific learning outcomes. Thus, most student projects at AAU are limited in their focus on simple problems, which can be handled within a narrow-disciplined project, and students consider it a “waste of time“ or even a risk to engage in interdisciplinary learning (Bertel et al., 2023). By fostering cognitive flexibility and divergent ways of thinking (creative thinking, systems thinking, design thinking and future thinking) the aim is for students to be able not only to see their discipline-projects as parts of a complex whole, but to dare collaborate and co-create better and more sustainable solutions to complex problems. Here, systems thinking can provide a methodology for understanding problems as intricately interconnected in socio-technical systems, while creative thinking, design thinking and future thinking provide the skills and mindset needed to address and act on the complex and constantly changing grand challenges of society.

This project builds on current collaboration and connects ongoing research and efforts to support the integration of thinking skills into PBL, and in the project we will explore and apply these exact ways of thinking ourselves to research and co-create concrete prototypes for teaching thinking skills and complex problem-solving at three different educational levels, in collaboration with MIT:
- Post-graduate level: an interdisciplinary PhD-course and/or summer school focusing on creative thinking in research, inspired by PhD course “Transform your research with creative thinking” (Hansen et. al. 2025)
- Graduate level: an interdisciplinary elective for master’s students inspired by the Creative Genius Program, a previous master’s program (2013-2019) which managed to attract more than 200 students from 56 different programs and was found to succesfully develop creative competences such as open-mindedness, horizontal thinking and co-creation collaborative abilities (Hansen & Bertel, 2023).
- Undergraduate level: an interdisciplinary full day workshop inviting students from across SSH/STEM/HEALTH, which will be tested in connection with AAU ProLab, a workshop concept develop to support students’ professional and transversal skills.

The project will build on ongoing collaboration with MIT New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET); a new program with interdisciplinary ‘threads‘ (MIT New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET).and a focus on fostering thinking skills. Furthermore, the project will seek to involve the Presensing Institut from the MIT Sloan School of Mangement (Presencing Institute. which was founded by Otto Scharmer and aims to develop theory and practice of systems transformation and to support leadership skills in individuals, organizations and multi-sector groups to bring about change in their own contexts.

By combining and integrating different ways of thinking in the AAU PBL model, we get a more flexible, holistic and future-proof variation of the PBL model applicable to both single discipline projects, but also interdisciplinary projects, missions and programs that include both STEM and SSH.

While the project aims to develop PBL-prototypes, the project will also collect data and conduct and publish research related to the efforts.

StatusIgangværende
Effektiv start/slut dato01/01/202531/12/2025

Samarbejdspartnere

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology

FN's verdensmål

I 2015 blev FN-landene enige om 17 verdensmål til at bekæmpe fattigdom, beskytte planeten og sikre velstand for alle. Dette projekt bidrager til følgende verdensmål:

  • Verdensmål 4 - Kvalitetsuddannelse

Emneord

  • Creative thinking
  • Systems thinking
  • PBL
  • Interdisciplinarity
  • Complex problems
  • Creativity Training