Towards a Learning System for University Campuses …
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1. to support the planning stages of a campus-based sustainability project, to ensure
that the educational, research and wider community benefits are maximised;
2. to support the monitoring of such projects, ensuring opportunities for benefits
are fully explored throughout;
3. to support the reflection and internal learning of a project once completed, and
ascertain ways to develop further impact;
4. as a tool to improve engagement with diverse stakeholders in the unique local
environment. This methodology and framework is unique to the context of
HEIs, because of their breadth of stakeholders through their combined education,
research and wider community engagement missions as well as their extensive
estate; and
5. as a way of disseminating good practice across the global sustainability HEI
community, allowing people from across the world to easily access detailed
case studies of processes, practices and products to inform their own work on
sustainable practices in their own HEIs.
The framework is also focused specifically on using improvements in the sustainable practices of the campus environment and operations itself as the ‘living lab’,
meaning that the HEI’s community of staff and students comprises the various roles
of the researchers and those being researched, as well as the educators and those
being educated. However, this framework could also be modified for use in large
organisations interested in improving their sustainability practices, educating their
stakeholders, and learning and reflecting on the processes and impacts of changes in
their practices. This framework could also be adapted within an HEI setting, where
university researchers work within the local, or wider, community to improve sustainable practices external to the HEI, and use this research to feed into their own campus
developments, and educational programmes and approaches. The localization and
utilization of this framework is up to the practitioner on the ground to interpret, test,
test again and apply, reflect, and rework until it is successful for their own context.
2.3 A Co-creation Process
The framework integrates knowledge and experience of developing, and researching
Living Labs within university campus environments. In developing the framework,
the authors have studied literature about Living Labs (Gross 2005; Liedtke et al.
2012; Brandt 2013; König and Evans 2013; Schneidewind 2014; Trencher et al. 2014;
Evans 2015; Gross 2015; Schäpke et al. 2015; Voytenko et al. 2015) literature about
transition research and transformation science (Sharp 2002; Cortese 2003; Koester
et al. 2006; Lozano 2006; Ferrer-Balas et al. 2008; Pohl and Hadorn 2008; Loorbach
and Rotmans 2010; Dunphy et al. 2014; Wagner and Grunwald 2015) and reports
created by organisations based on best practices and case studies (Lozano 2006; Lang
et al. 2012; Scholz and Steiner 2015a, b; Botero et al. 2017). An important element in
139
1. to support the planning stages of a campus-based sustainability project, to ensure
that the educational, research and wider community benefits are maximised;
2. to support the monitoring of such projects, ensuring opportunities for benefits
are fully explored throughout;
3. to support the reflection and internal learning of a project once completed, and
ascertain ways to develop further impact;
4. as a tool to improve engagement with diverse stakeholders in the unique local
environment. This methodology and framework is unique to the context of
HEIs, because of their breadth of stakeholders through their combined education,
research and wider community engagement missions as well as their extensive
estate; and
5. as a way of disseminating good practice across the global sustainability HEI
community, allowing people from across the world to easily access detailed
case studies of processes, practices and products to inform their own work on
sustainable practices in their own HEIs.
The framework is also focused specifically on using improvements in the sustainable practices of the campus environment and operations itself as the ‘living lab’,
meaning that the HEI’s community of staff and students comprises the various roles
of the researchers and those being researched, as well as the educators and those
being educated. However, this framework could also be modified for use in large
organisations interested in improving their sustainability practices, educating their
stakeholders, and learning and reflecting on the processes and impacts of changes in
their practices. This framework could also be adapted within an HEI setting, where
university researchers work within the local, or wider, community to improve sustainable practices external to the HEI, and use this research to feed into their own campus
developments, and educational programmes and approaches. The localization and
utilization of this framework is up to the practitioner on the ground to interpret, test,
test again and apply, reflect, and rework until it is successful for their own context.
2.3 A Co-creation Process
The framework integrates knowledge and experience of developing, and researching
Living Labs within university campus environments. In developing the framework,
the authors have studied literature about Living Labs (Gross 2005; Liedtke et al.
2012; Brandt 2013; König and Evans 2013; Schneidewind 2014; Trencher et al. 2014;
Evans 2015; Gross 2015; Schäpke et al. 2015; Voytenko et al. 2015) literature about
transition research and transformation science (Sharp 2002; Cortese 2003; Koester
et al. 2006; Lozano 2006; Ferrer-Balas et al. 2008; Pohl and Hadorn 2008; Loorbach
and Rotmans 2010; Dunphy et al. 2014; Wagner and Grunwald 2015) and reports
created by organisations based on best practices and case studies (Lozano 2006; Lang
et al. 2012; Scholz and Steiner 2015a, b; Botero et al. 2017). An important element in