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UNA.TEN.... A LIVING LAB CHALLENGE FOR NEW FORMATS IN EDUCATION AND MOBILITY
FACULTY WORLDWIDE
On 8th May, UNA EUROPA concluded UNA.TEN – “Transform Emergency Now! 10 days for change”. UNA.TEN was set up as a pan-European student hackathon to tackle challenges in COVID19 post-emergency times. Based on an open innovation design process, student teams from all participating UNA EUROPA universities joined forces with local partners to find solutions to four specific COVID-related challenges: (1) Rethinking entertainment and culture, (2) Securing privacy and preventing misconceptions in a digital world, (3) Ensuring traveller safety, and (4) Avoiding food waste.
UNA EUROPA is a unique alliance of eight European research universities, with KU Leuven as one of the leading members. Funded among the first “European University” pilot projects selected by the European Commission in June 2019, UNA EUROPA’s 1Europe project will establish a Europe-wide living lab for testing Joint Innovative Formats for education and mobility.
One of KU Leuven’s four student teams in the UNA.TEN challenge was set up by KU Leuven KICK in collaboration with Technovation Hub of the Faculty of Engineering Technology.
Online digital consent
Chrisje Haenen, Executive Committee Member of Technovation Hub, together with the coaches Rudi Lenaerts (Laurion BV) and Prof. Wim Van Petegem, joined forces to support the student team on the “online digital consent” theme. The team worked on the question of “How to protect our privacy and help fight dangers, fears, and misconceptions in a digital world?”
Prof. Wim Van Petegem
Chrisje Haenen en Rudi Lenaerts
The student team worked ten days intensively and in an agile way on this challenge, with sprint meetings every day and four intermediate milestone meetings where they met with other teams in Bologna and in Krakow working on the same challenge. A Slack and Google Drive environment ensured a fluent sharing of insights and materials. This resulted in a new, challenge-based type of collaboration with virtual mobility.
“Actually coaching this team was easy,” explains Prof. Van Petegem. “We started each day with a short stand-up meeting with the team. Our main role as coaches was to bring students in contact with stakeholders in the field of education, research and industry so that they could get feedback for their ideas”.
Jorrit Willaert and Anirudh Pabba, two of the team members, add: “The multidisciplinarity in the team proved to be a main asset in coming up with an approach to the challenge. The mix of expertise in our team with law (from Isidora Gonzalez Rios, a third team member), science (Anirudh) and engineering (Jorrit) turned out to be very successful, and resulted in a holistic experience.”
Roles
The roles in the team were clearly defined in the first few days. Anirudh took the responsibility as a project planner, whereas Isidora worked on the legal and juridical aspects and Jorrit was responsible for the practical implementation of the choices made. All their hard work eventually resulted in a blueprint for a customisable add-on for browsers to protect the user’s digital rights. Needless to say that this solution was highly appreciated by all participants of the final presentation at the end of the two weeks challenge.
“I was pleasantly surprised by the eagerness and the willingness of the team to pick-up the challenge and to really deliver a solution” adds Rudi Lenaerts, “Moreover, working with an international team (Anirudh is from India, Isidora from Chile and Jorrit from Belgium) added an extra very positive dimension to it”.
In total, UNA.TEN attracted more than 100 students who worked together in 19 teams, in this way paving the road for challenge-based learning, not only in times of virtual mobility, but maybe for the future of higher education in Europe and beyond.
Hilde Lauwereys
www.una-europa.eu
