Abstract:

With Artificial Intelligence widening its field of application at an increasing speed, a similarly increasing number of jobs appears to be threatened by the perspective of the so-called technological unemployment. While this view is currently strongly debated, one aspect remains factual: some jobs are rotating out of the market, or have been otherwise significantly resized by the impact of automation. One such class of jobs is that of crafts: while it could be argued that this trend started with industrialization almost two centuries ago, the problem has been exacerbated in the last decades by the lack of generational turnover. The outcomes of these trends have been mainly two: crafts have either been left to wither with no intervention, or have been replaced by industry.

These effects can also be traced to how the education sector focused its efforts. Indeed, as our society becomes more educated, these skills and expertises have lost relative weight, favouring instead more traditionally academic disciplines. We can see these two trends as intersecting: on the one hand, our society wants to preserve their crafts and the heritage they represent; on the other hand, education wants to address the challenge of broadening the skill set of learners.

The pedagogical reflections carried out in the last decades, however, might provide a possible solution space. Indeed, as the speed of knowledge generation and obsolescence increases, many teaching methods and learning spaces have been designed to provide more relevant education. Among these are for sure methodologies of constructivist education, and the introduction in Higher Education (HE) curricula of subjects such as Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) together with an increased focus on experiential, explorative, hands-on learning. These educational trends, together with the rise and consolidation of technological entrepreneurship create a receptive environment where interactions and intersections between disciplines and sectors can be channelled to spark innovation, giving a practical outlet to academic education.

In this position paper, we will discuss a possible solution that enables students in ICT - the very disciplines that are partly the root cause of the discussed problem - to become the drivers of this process of change. We will first analyze in detail the problem and solution space outlined before to provide a more in-depth analysis. We will then illustrate a possible framework of teaching methods, learning spaces and stakeholders that can generate a “third way” to address the key intergenerational challenge related to crafts. This, we will argue, makes possible preserving human cultural heritage, broadening student skill sets and creating new job opportunities less vulnerable to obsolescence due to automation. We will provide an example of a possible implementation for this framework through a university Fab Lab, expanding the reflections sketched in a poster paper currently pending review for the FabLearn Europe conference. Finally, we will draw conclusions on what could be the impacts of this view, and discuss what are the next steps in the implementation of this vision.

Keywords:

Pedagogical innovation, skills development, interdisciplinary education, hands-on learning.