Learning out of the box
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
What if “teachers leave the kids alone”? No teachers, no alumni. Just a different, inclusive, and ever-evolving community in a pilot project. An interdisciplinary education model with tangible and open-access information will be ensured through the real-time graphic on the effects of sustainability, quality of experience, and inclusion on people’s wellbeing. What better way to educate than “learning by participating”?
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
As never before during this pandemic we are witnessing a need to move beyond the anthropocentrism and the human-centric design approach by moving to an overture able to put together human beings, Nature and Built Environment. Thus, an interdisciplinary education model that can rediscover their interconnection through an eco-spheric approach is needed. For this reason, an innovative education system that clearly visuals and shows in real-time how and to what extent people’s wellbeing is impacted by a beautiful, sustainable and inclusive place is proposed. An interdisciplinary approach will be used calling for professionals and highly experts of different disciplines to define what the terms sustainable, beautiful and inclusive mean and what are the related parameters to take into account for wellbeing purposes. The impact of the NEB key points on people’s well-being (thanks to the main well-being parameters previously defined by high experts) will be shown to professionals, citizens, city administrators, and students who be all directly involved in interdisciplinary and educational living lab. Thanks both to the use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and medicine bio parameters and qualitative tools such as survey and questionnaires, the educational living lab will show in real-time the impact of a beautiful, sustainable and inclusive place on wellbeing, namely the fil rouge of this investigation and educational model. Thus, participants will observe the interaction between their real-time wellbeing (measured through non-invasive bio-parametric tools and questionnaires) and beautiful, sustainable and inclusive space in a pilot study in the city of Florence with regards to ethical aspects not only through the consensus of participants but precisely also with their direct participation in open-access information that will result in people knowledge and consciousness thanks to clear graphic images.
Key objectives for sustainability
This interdisciplinary education model aims to move beyond the traditional concept of “sustainability”, by calling attention not only to technical aspects (such as energy savings, materials, and so on) but also to “human sustainability” focusing on design’s impacts on human beings and user experience as reported by Kramer, KL. (2012). Generally speaking, when we think about the use of the term “sustainability” we usually refer to augmented attention to nature with a vision that almost set aside human needs or, anyway, that asks people to move against their needs in favor of environmental preservation. However, according to Levin H. (1995), a healthy place is one that adversely affects neither the larger environment nor the health of its occupants. For this reason, no one supersedes the other and people should be conscious that act for sustainability means acting for their well-being. This education model would like to show what sustainability means in a dynamic equilibrium between people's needs, nature safeguards, the use of new technologies and Built Environment. The model will consist of:
- organisation of a day with a first open dialogue between experts on what sustainability means
- outline of a document with main common relevant aspects and key parameters of the interdisciplinary concept of sustainability
- outline of an informative graphic on what sustainability means and the negative consequences of its neglect
- organisation of a living lab with real-time participants’ wellbeing measurement (through bio parameters and questionnaires)
This education model will show the real-time effects of sustainability on participants’ well-being during the pilot project. A mixed-method of quantitative research (bio parametric analysis, artificial intelligence) and qualitative research (questionnaires and survey involving both professionals and non-professionals as well as municipalities) will be used involving participants and becoming a tool to create consciousness.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
People are today asking themselves if they could live in a specific space/city if a lockdown will face again and for this, the pandemic has been an incredible opportunity to pause us for a moment and to reflect on what is working and what is not in planning’s choices adopted to date testing the resilience of people and the spaces where they live. The high dissatisfaction of places exposed by covid-19 shows the correlation between the quality of space and aesthetics, especially from mental/physical health. Thus, a valuable transdisciplinary education model able to address people’s needs to better design future places not only from a stylistic point of view but also from a sociological, anthropological, psychological, and health perspectives is needed. For this reason, this part will be done through:
- organisation of a day with a first open dialogue between experts on quality of experience and aesthetics with professionals, students, citizens, and administrations
- outline of a document with main common relevant aspects and key parameters of the interdisciplinary concept
- outline of an informative graphic on what aesthetic/quality of experience means and how they impact wellbeing
- organisation of a living lab with real-time participants’ wellbeing measurement (through bio parameters and questionnaires) concerning aesthetics and quality of experience
This education model will show the real-time effects of aesthetics and quality of experience on participants’ well-being during the pilot project. A mixed-method of quantitative research (artificial intelligence, people bio parametric analysis) and qualitative research (through questionnaires and surveys involving both professionals and non-professionals as well as municipalities) will be used directly involving participants and becoming a tool to create consciousness.
Key objectives for inclusion
Every aspect of the education’s pilot project will be carried out through the direct involvement of all volunteer participants by including the whole community. This interdisciplinary education model moves on the importance of the New European Bauhaus themes by encouraging the active participation of all the individuals and enriching the debate from different perspectives by offering the widest approach to the model thanks to the co-existence of different point of views including:
- different cultural and social background
- different ethnicity, gender and religion
- people with special needs
Concerning that, wellbeing will be considered as a tool to deeply understand not only what sustainability and aesthetics/quality of experience mean but also a way to show different perspectives. The focus on wellbeing that depends on different perceptions due to different cultural and social background ethnicity, gender, religion and needs offer the possibility to better understand and discuss what is the point of view of the “others” and to contribute to the inclusion by learning the importance of a total vision of the theme. Of special significance will be also the inclusive strategies regard to people with disabilities to participate alongside non-disabled peers in the discussion of the theme and the direct involvement in the pilot project thanks to easy-to-use technologies and non-invasive bio parameters detection tool. Moreover, assistive technologies such as the description of images for blind people, captioning for hearing, sign language and speech recognition will be guaranteed. A participatory learning approach, as well as cooperative learning and inclusive methodology, will be used to emphasize the full potential of NEB themes. The commitment is to allow people to show their potential and to feel valued in their full expression of their specific characteristics to actively contribute to the project and to give the widest framework of what a comm
Innovative character
The innovative characters of this interdisciplinary project are related to an interdisciplinary education model able to:
- Create a stimulating place in which to share opinions without an “ultimate truth”. There is no teacher, everyone is participating starting from professionals to citizens
- Define a living lab project with real-time and open-access information
- Study the concept of sustainability, inclusion and quality of experience through the quantitative and qualitative measures of their impact on the well-being’s people
- Have a tangible experience on what people’s well-being means through the active participation
- Have an easy and fast communication through images directly stemmed from biometric tools and questionnaires
- Define what a liveable and high-quality place means not through the frontal teaching but using an educational living lab project that inform all the participants
- Guaranteeing open access information that could enrich not only the active participants of the projects but also all the interested people and the main cities ‘decision-makers
Moreover, this interdisciplinary education model could be also intended as a process that aims to reach high-quality living taking into account users’ different and ever-evolving wellbeing upon which design spaces in different projects’ scales.
