Exploring New Technology’s Meaning for a Sustainable Future …
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positive result is in line with the known community building effect of games and play
(Bowman 2010; Caillois 1958).
Participants also made new contacts and said that the skill-building exercises acted
like “teambuilding, but not awkward”, because they very naturally built on universal
shared experiences of students. The participants filled them with fragments of their
own experiences in which the others could recognize themselves.
Lastly, CSFP also attempts to foster innovation, because it considers sustainable
science-fiction technology. One prerequisite for collaborative innovation to take place
is to exchange ideas. All participants completely agreed that they were able to share
ideas openly and without reservation. This high level of trust is a sign that the format
managed to establish a safe space.
The next important aspect is that new ideas often emerge when previously disconnected knowledge collides; therefore, being exposed to a variety of new and different
ideas is conducive to innovation. When asked whether the format provided insights
into manifold ideas and thoughts, 46% agreed completely and 54% agreed with a
two out of six. Furthermore, 23% completely agreed that the format offers them
inspiration through the ideas of others, with the majority of 69% agreeing with a two
and only 8% with a three, suggesting that the format provided an environment for
innovation.
In addition to this, innovators need tools and structures to develop their ideas.
We asked the students whether our methods provided an inspiring possibility to
think about things in a new way. The response was predominantly positive, as 31%
completely agreed, the majority of 46% agreed with a two and 23% with a three.
Finally, the students assessed whether the format enables them to develop particularly
creative ideas, which would not have been created in prevalent teaching formats: 62%
completely agreed, 31% agreed at a two and 8% at a three.
Summing up, the evaluation of the format showed that card-based SCFP is suitable
as a teaching format, as well as a collaborative innovation method. Its application to
introduce sustainability-related topics into the engineering curriculum needs to be
discussed in more detail: It sensitizes participants to the topic and creates engagement with it through the groups investing time and energy into their own idea and
seeing it play out in a story. It also allows the students to generate tangible ideas
for research projects they could tackle in the present in order to create a sustainable
future. However, the survey results and verbal feedback showed that such an isolated
offering is hard to fit into the mental framework of their studies, i.e. how does the
topic relate to the rest of their curriculum and to the challenges they will face in the
work force?
3.4 Guidelines for Practitioners
We derived a set of guidelines for practitioners interested in incorporating the method
into their own work, based on the above analyses of both audio recordings and survey
results.
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positive result is in line with the known community building effect of games and play
(Bowman 2010; Caillois 1958).
Participants also made new contacts and said that the skill-building exercises acted
like “teambuilding, but not awkward”, because they very naturally built on universal
shared experiences of students. The participants filled them with fragments of their
own experiences in which the others could recognize themselves.
Lastly, CSFP also attempts to foster innovation, because it considers sustainable
science-fiction technology. One prerequisite for collaborative innovation to take place
is to exchange ideas. All participants completely agreed that they were able to share
ideas openly and without reservation. This high level of trust is a sign that the format
managed to establish a safe space.
The next important aspect is that new ideas often emerge when previously disconnected knowledge collides; therefore, being exposed to a variety of new and different
ideas is conducive to innovation. When asked whether the format provided insights
into manifold ideas and thoughts, 46% agreed completely and 54% agreed with a
two out of six. Furthermore, 23% completely agreed that the format offers them
inspiration through the ideas of others, with the majority of 69% agreeing with a two
and only 8% with a three, suggesting that the format provided an environment for
innovation.
In addition to this, innovators need tools and structures to develop their ideas.
We asked the students whether our methods provided an inspiring possibility to
think about things in a new way. The response was predominantly positive, as 31%
completely agreed, the majority of 46% agreed with a two and 23% with a three.
Finally, the students assessed whether the format enables them to develop particularly
creative ideas, which would not have been created in prevalent teaching formats: 62%
completely agreed, 31% agreed at a two and 8% at a three.
Summing up, the evaluation of the format showed that card-based SCFP is suitable
as a teaching format, as well as a collaborative innovation method. Its application to
introduce sustainability-related topics into the engineering curriculum needs to be
discussed in more detail: It sensitizes participants to the topic and creates engagement with it through the groups investing time and energy into their own idea and
seeing it play out in a story. It also allows the students to generate tangible ideas
for research projects they could tackle in the present in order to create a sustainable
future. However, the survey results and verbal feedback showed that such an isolated
offering is hard to fit into the mental framework of their studies, i.e. how does the
topic relate to the rest of their curriculum and to the challenges they will face in the
work force?
3.4 Guidelines for Practitioners
We derived a set of guidelines for practitioners interested in incorporating the method
into their own work, based on the above analyses of both audio recordings and survey
results.