An Open Education Platform

Important results from the project

The purpose of this project was to create new conditions for lifelong learning and skill development within the framework of regular university courses and thereby improve accessibility to education later in life, but also to enrich the educational environment for ordinary students with industry-relevant knowledge and committed mentors. The goal was to scale an existing challenge-based design course in product development into an open educational platform where practitioners can choose educational elements in a flexible way and thus create a long-term sustainable arrangement.

Expected long term effects

We have a functioning platform where so far 15 students from Saab have developed skills in design thinking, product development, coaching and leadership together with regular students and with very good results. By participating in workshops and then following the students´ project work, the Saab students can see how methods are expressed in practice. The students thus contribute to the Saab students´ practical learning, while the Saab students contribute with experience and examples to the students´ theoretical learning. The arrangement can easily be spread to other courses.

Approach and implementation

In the first year, we tested four different ways for industry students to participate and transformed training sessions into workshops as a prototype. We evaluated but also benchmarked against other international universities in our network to learn more. Based on analysis of the Saab students´ experiences and the very positive response from first-year students, we chose a uniform model in the second year. We further developed project content and created further synergies between the student groups. We also tested our approach against other industry partners.