First pilot round has started

The SINCOE project has begun one of the most interesting phases when the first authentic teaching pilots were launched this autumn.

Students on the pilot courses come from different fields and study programmes, e.g., media, design, mechanical, and industrial organisation engineering, management, telecommunication, business and marketing, and social sciences. Additionally, these Bachelor and Master level students are representing different stages of their studies, such as freshmen, later year students, and life-long learners of experienced adults.

In the SINCOE pilots, teachers are testing, researching and experimenting in different ways how they could better embed innovation competence in their teaching and support students to identify, develop and assess their innovation competencies in their learning activities in varied online environments or part of them (e.g., online, hybrid, asynchronous and synchronous, metaverse). Under these categories there will be different types of learning environments such as project-based studies, subject-specific courses and study tutoring.

These first pilot experiments are focused on the following topics:

 

• Understanding development of students’ innovation competences and motivation beginning of engineering studies (Turku UAS)
• Identify the importance that engineering or business management students assign to each innovation dimension (UPV)
• Creating interactive and friendly atmosphere to apply innovation competences in metaverse (Turku UAS)
• Activating learning and teaching methods to involve and motivate students by ChatGPT (Turku UAS)
• Developing efficient technical usability and learning analytic possibilities of the SINCOE@ Assessment Tool (Turku UAS)
• Refinement of SINCOE@ Assessment Tool (UPV)
• Develop cases that induce behaviors associated with innovation dimensions and verify their effectiveness (UPV)
• Create a procedure to observe and assess innovation competence in medium-sized groups (50 students) (UPV)
• Compare the observation with video (360º camera) versus face-to-face, as a pilot for the feasibility of observing virtual meetings (UPV)
• Examining the usefulness of a training to improve self-assessment of innovation competence in online and face-to-face learning situations (HAW)
• Testing the applicability of a revised survey system for self-assessment of innovation competencies among first-semester students in the School of Life Sciences (HAW)
• Effect of elements of online pedagogy on the development of innovation skills of first-year students in the Department of Ecotrophology (HAW)
• Using the Assessment Tool in a course about the impact of (new) information technology on business models and business processes in the Marketing curriculum (B.Sc., 4th semester). Students will reflect their innovation competence in the context of developing / discussing business models and processes (HAW)

The pilots were selected based on the results of the need analysis. With a careful selection of a broad range of pilots from different categories and learning environments, SINCOE provides a good overview of ongoing HE studies in Europe. In total, there will be pilots with a minimum of 20 educators and 600 learners (from HEIs) from all partner countries.

Information about the experiences and pilot results of teachers and students will become available later. If you are already interested in the pilots, feel free to contact the local contact persons

Finland, Turku University of Applied Sciences (Turku UAS): Meiju Keinänen, meiju.keinanen@turkuamk.fi

Germany, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW Hamburg): Christiane Stange, christiane.stange@haw-hamburg.de

Spain, Universitat Politecnica of Valencia (UPV): Milena Gomez rmgomcab@upv.edu.es