Designing and Facilitating Learning in a Cooperative Setting

This paper unfolds how learning for design-engineer students can be established and facilitated in a dynamic research setting, between academics and industrial partners. It challenges years of experience from teaching traditional Problem Based Learning, and it requires new initiatives to ensure the learning of students. Student involvement in research projects appears to be an increasing trend, which is affecting both the practice of research and education.
The Danish research project ‘Innodoors’ investigates, through various initiatives, how User-driven innovation can contribute to innovation and affect the culture of innovation in the building sector. One of the research initiatives was originally probing hypothesizes through student projects, where the students not only play a practical and performing role, but also engage in a rather equal partnership with the academic. This was also the case for the involved industrial design students, but they found it necessary to redefine the initial, given hypothesis, which surprisingly uncovered knowledge deficiencies for both students and academic; yet, it contributed to a mutual learning situation.
Educators are facing new challenges with the responsibility of facilitating learning for students, and the student involvement is changed as they are empowered by orchestrating the projects - this is the focal point for the paper.