ICT-INOV, Modernizing ICT Education for Harvesting Innovation
Guiding high-quality ICT education at higher education level in Europe and Asia towards innovation. The project is funded by the capacity building in higher education Erasmus+ programme and is implemented in Greece, Malaysia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nepal, Portugal, Italy, and Estonia.
ICT is universally recognised as a high growth sector and is expected to drive economic growth in the near future. The high demand for digital services fuels its development as a result of the rapid evolution of computer networks. To meet societal and industry needs, ICT education needs to evolve at a pace that follows technological innovation. Given the rapid growth of technology, which results in services and products rapidly becoming obsolete, the most important skill that educational institutions can build among young students is their innovation capacity and critical and analytical thinking to enable them to remain at the forefront of their field throughout their career.
In view of the above, ICT-INOV aims to improve the potential of ICT education at higher education level in Asia and Europe to harvest students' innovation potential, empowering them to bring ideas into action. With the gamified design thinking approaches for building a highly-skilled ICT workforce, the project intends to develop a holistic learning programme that builds physical and digital infrastructures, innovative digital content, and instructor capacity to roll out emerging digitally-enabled learning design. In particular, the projects aim to use a gamified, design thinking-based learning framework to foster innovation, a digital learning platform that encourages collaboration in design thinking contexts and promotes engagement through gamification, digital learning activities, to encourage students to think creatively through design thinking approaches, and instructor training and community-building events to promote adopting the proposed learning intervention.
Therefore, within the context of the above-mentioned goals, the article reports on the results obtained so far. In particular, the survey analysis, which aimed to examine students’ engagement and expectations for building innovation skills, is provided. In addition, the detailed learning needs analysis and methodical learning framework based on experiential approaches to integrating design thinking and gamification elements are presented.
Basic information
- EU-Track, Italy
- Porto Polytechnic, Portugal
- Tallinn University, Estonia
- Universiti of Malaya, Malaysia
- Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia
- Hanoi University, Vietnam
- John Von Newmann Institute, Vietnam
- Kathmandu University, Nepal
- Tribhuvan University, Nepal
- ISRA University, Pakistan
- National University of Future and Emerging Sciences, Pakistan
The research activity was focused on the survey conducted with students and educators about the design thinking approach and gamified educational framework for fostering innovation in computer science education. In particular, a study was conducted about the students’ expectations of building innovation skills, their learning needs analysis, and methodical learning framework based on experiential approaches integrating design thinking and gamification elements and the analysis of the current situation in the partner countries.
In the end, the methodological framework based on the design thinking approach and gamification techniques was developed. It is available here (http://ictinov-project.eu/).
The project aims to modernise and internationalise ICT education in higher education through gamified design thinking approaches to promote innovative and entrepreneurial thinking, empowering students to turn ideas into action.
It uses design thinking, a highly human-centred design approach, which allows solutions to complex problems to be introduced, even if none appear to exist at first sight. In fact, it follows a process of empathy, problem statement re-definition, brainstorming, prototyping, and evaluation to look at problems from the user’s perspective and address real, as opposed to perceived, needs.
Then, the design thinking process is gamified through meaningful goals, clear missions, and rewards for motivating student engagement in design.
The project introduces a holistic approach that facilitates the adoption of innovation-building activities in higher education through:
- Developing physical infrastructures in the form of labs.
- Developing a digital learning platform (http://ictinov-project.eu/index.php/gamified-design-thinking-platform/) for collaboration in design and innovation and digital educational activities inspired by real-world problems.
- Building educators’ ability to integrate innovation skills development in their classrooms through instructor training and community-building events.
