HANNOVER 2000 - Portuguese Pavilion

Monday, 11 September 2000

 

Collaborative Design and Learning:
competence building for innovation
 

Co-ordination

Objective

Approach

Background

List of Invited Speakers

Program and Papers available for download

Publications

Participants List

REGISTRATION IS COMPULSORY

Sponsoring Organizations:

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT-MCT

http://www.fct.mct.pt

Fundação Luso-Americana para
o Desenvolvimento, FLAD http://www.flad.pt

Portuguese Pavilion web site
http://www.mct.pt/Expo2000/

 

Co-ordination:


Co-ordinating Institutions:

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Objective:

To present and discuss programmes aimed at creating and promoting new skills through collaborative and distance learning, taking advantage of new information and communication systems, and considering transdisciplinary projects. The emphasis will be on networks involving architecture and engineering students.

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Approach:

The Workshop will be based on the discussion of case studies and recent experiences on collaborative and distance learning. The mechanisms used are networks linking people, particularly students, with different backgrounds, aimed at increasing their ability to cope with emerging challenges. The first part of the workshop will be devoted to the analysis of a case study involving the design and construction of a glass chair. Such a chair is an appropriate case study because it constitutes a complex product that requires particular safety precautions, careful handling, and specific production expertise. In addition, it involves the creation of free forms, and promotes the development of new skills. The second part of the workshop will include the presentation of various case studies by European and American researchers.

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Background: The Main Case Study - a glass chair

In the emerging knowledge economies, the combination of expertise in production systems breaks away from existing concepts of time, space, and behaviour. In addition, current technological systems are complex and carry many levels of cultural meaning. In this context, the renewal of education and training systems is based on the idea that technological innovation is chiefly a social activity and that multidisciplinary technical is critical for social acceptance and embedding of technical innovation outputs.

The building-up of design capabilities involve multiple learning routes, including formal and informal processes, where design and production experience are equally important. This framework raises interesting issues in the development of design and production abilities as the focus is on learning before doing unlike more traditional models in which the focus is on learning by doing.

The learning environment provided was a global classroom consisting multiple sites distributed around the world. Such learning environments have been possible due to advances in information and communications technologies, which have increased the ability of networking by providing adequate tools in three categories of requirements: those related with time co-ordination, sharing of (virtual) space, and sharing of contents. We consider learning networks, that is, networks that lead to self-reinforcing learning cycles. The technologies used included video-teleconference and other Internet based GroupWare. In this context, "virtual teams" have been associated with the emergence of distributed cross-organisational arrangements, which involve people from different organisations who work at different places. The result is a process of entrepreneurial education, through which the acquisition of new knowledge is followed by living and experiencing entrepreneurial environments which, in turn, facilitate the creation of new knowledge. The result isa learning triangle, integrating academic, vocational and experimental activities.

The project brought together American students from Architecture, who were involved in the study of Free-Form Design, and Portuguese engineering students, namely from Civil Engineering and Mechanical Engineering. Civil engineering students worked in Structural Analysis, and Mechanical engineering ones worked in Product Development, Product Liability and Safety, Mould Production and Glass Slumping Process. The glass chair will be presented as a tangible result, but the important results are intangible in nature and associated with the valorisation of human and intellectual capital, in a context favourable to innovation, where learning networks play a critical role.

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List of Invited Speakers:

 

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Final Program:

Part 1: 9:30 am - 12:30 am


Part 2: 2:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

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Publications

The papers to be presented in the workshop will be available by the time of the workshop and will be distributed to all the participants. Then, a book is being planned to be edited by the end of 2000 with extended and revised versions of the papers. The book will be published through Greenwood Publ., QUORUM BOOKS; within the Series on "Technology Policy and Innovation", http://in3.dem.ist.utl.pt/quorumseries/.

Proposed contents of the Book to be edited with selected material from the workshop:

Title: Collaborative Design and Learning: Competence building for innovation

Publisher: QUORUM BOOKS, Series on "Technology Policy And Innovation"

Date of Publication: December 2000 (to be confirmed)


Proposed List of Contents:

Preface

Part 1 - Building a conceptual framework for future perspectives

Part 2 - Advanced tools and Logistics

Part 3 - Case Studies

 
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