University of the Future presented at DDW 2024
Blog #1 October, 2024
At Dutch Design Week 2024, we invited the public to step into the University of the Future and experience firsthand how education can contribute to solving the grand societal challenges the world faces. Through interactive elements, visitors discovered how their unique contributions, when combined with others, could create a powerful, collective impact. At the University of the Future, everyone鈥攏o matter their age or background鈥攈as a role to play in creating impactful change and is welcome to join.
The visitors followed this three-step journey:
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Hologram: This high-tech, visually striking hologram brought visitors into the future, showcasing the University of the Future as a place where creativity meets innovation, and people unite to tackle real-world challenges. The hologram set the stage for visitors to imagine how they, too, could play a role in solving global issues.
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Interactive table: By entering the tent, visitors joined the University of the Future by selecting their passions on the screen. In groups of up to six, they tackled challenges like dementia care, basic skills development, and heat stress鈥攔eal-world challenges already being addressed in Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) courses. Over the course of the week, we hosted 395 games with 1,657 players, with our team members often joining in to encourage real-time interaction. Through this collaborative game, visitors experienced the importance of investing most of their time in transdisciplinary collaboration while also reserving time to focus on their own expertise.
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Reflection area: Over 800 visitors engaged in marble voting to express their confidence in how to contribute to societal challenges and used LEGO blocks on a scale to visualize how much percentage of their time they believe should be focused on collaboration to solve these challenges.
Our University of the Future project sparked meaningful discussions, extending the conversation on how education can serve as a platform for positive change. This aligns closely with by Salar Alizad Poursaeidi (PhD candidate at the ITEM group), who gathered 503 post-its from visitors sharing their thoughts on regional and everyday challenges. He presented grand societal challenges derived from literature and asked visitors which specific regional or everyday challenges they felt motivated to address, resulting in valuable insights that deepen our understanding of community priorities.
Interested to read more about this event? Read the .