Abstract
We are now experiencing the first real impacts of the 4th industrial revolution, affecting our social, political, economic, and cultural lives. There is a fusion of technologies and research within several fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, genetics, and biology.
Our current education system is becoming irrelevant unless it can cope with the fast and disruptive changes. Universities need to find new strategies that enable them to play an active role within the global society, delivering relevant education for students usable for their future work-life. Redesign the old model of education towards education 4.0(1)
However, using technology and digital solutions to take shortcuts towards a new sustainable educational ecosystem is not the solution. There must be a focus on pedagogy first, with large elements of student active learning, communication and collaboration, the deliverance of 21st-century skills.
The largest University in the Netherlands, Delft Technical University (TUDelft), and the largest University in Noway, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) are continuously optimizing their campus facilities, teaching practices, and technological infrastructure. However, their prerequisites and approach differ (2) but they experience the same challenges, especially after COVID-19. The Pandemic has rapidly pushed the universities into an unknown digital landscape, exposing sedimented university structures, vulnerabilities, shortcomings, and the need to transform attitudes, pedagogy, spaces, and technology.
There is a need to consolidate the experiences from TUDelft and NTNU to get a clearer picture of the challenges coming up and how to solve them--finding common factors to act as guidelines for a new technological and pedagogical framework and merging the physical, online, and virtual spaces. Mapping blended learning and pedagogy working within this vast space and applying technology to obtain a seamless learning experience. It is all about finding the affordances and small nudges to move into the hybrid domain. To identify and expose complex challenges, artifacts, and long-term side-effects, which might appear in the onsite-hybrid-online transitions.
In this paper, we present the plans, prototypes, and framework for NTNU and TUDelft. After that, we examine the design of 3 different physical learning spaces made for various types of collaborative activities. We look at the technological/pedagogical prerequisites and barriers in the movement/transformation of these activities into an online or hybrid learning environment. Our combined experience and related discussion will give Universities a head start towards a new sustainable learning environment. |