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Project: Extending design thinking with emerging digital technologies (Exten.D.T.2)

The core ideas of the project rest on the assumption that design thinking combined with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and educational robotics provide new and innovative ways to address the challenges and opportunities for learning and education in the age of digital transformations – from current to future practices.

Project information

Project manager
Marcelo Milrad
Other project members
Fisnik Dalipi, Alisa Lincke, Ahmed Taiye Mohammed, Katrin Lindwall, Shamim Patel and Johanna Velander, Linnaeus University
Participating organizations
Linnaeus University; National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece; Ghent University, Belgium; Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway; Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Ireland; Simple (SME), Greece; The Open University, UK; University College London, UK
Financier
EU (the European Research Executive Agency via programmet Horizon Europe)
Timetable
1 Sept 2022–31 Aug 2025
Subject
Media technology, computer and information science (Department of Computer Science and Media Technology, Faculty of Technology)

More about the project

The Exten.D.T.2 consortium includes eight research partners – seven higher education institutions and one small/middle size enterprise – with complementary interdisciplinary academic expertise and many decades of experience, to develop education innovation supported by emerging technologies (ET).

The Exten.D.T.2 project will use emerging technologies to enhance the pedagogical value, sustainable digitization and potential for wide deployment of design thinking (DT). Design thinking is a promising transformative pedagogical innovation based on engaged interdisciplinary learning and the growth of 21st century skills for everyone, through entrepreneurial co-creation. Like other such innovations, however, it has yet to pull its potential weight in terms of impact in educational transformation.

Exten.D.T.2 will use design-based research to support/provide evidence for pedagogical transformation via design thinking enhanced by emerging technologies. It will employ already institutionalized, home-grown and open access digital expressive media of advanced technical readiness for students to engage in design thinking projects. It will also uniquely integrate with these expressive media emerging technologies i.e. artificial intelligence, augmented reality, 3D techniques and virtual robotics, to leverage digital implementation, monitoring and assessment of design thinking projects by teachers in schools.

Implemented/developed in different social contexts across six European countries, Exten.D.T.2 will explore the risks and potential of the pedagogical use of emerging technologies and how they support 21st century skills, in turn increasing the scope, transformative potential and applicability of design thinking with emerging technologies in mainstream schooling. Exten.D.T.2 will invite and inspire teachers and other stakeholders to design and implement such innovative educational projects, by running original strategic teacher professional development, providing courses and guidelines for them to design, implement and evaluate design thinking projects in their classrooms.

During the entire the lifetime of the project, we expect to maintain active and sustainable connections with educational institutions and policy-making institutions across six European countries.

The project is part of the research in the Computational Thinking and Coding Skills in Schools (CoCoS) research group and the Linnaeus Knowledge Environment Digital Transformations.

Staff