Abstract:

For more than ten years a project-based learning course (so-called information management challenge) has been taking place within the framework of a cooperation between the Nuremberg Institute of Technology, Faculty of Computer Science, and the global player Siemens Digital Industries, headquartered in Nuremberg. An essential characteristic of our course is that we organize it as a competition. This means that not all students work in a common project team on a common project. Instead, multiple project teams compete to find the best solution to the project objective. The target for each student team is always to develop robust ideas for a challenging digital transformation problem of the cooperation partner.

In our earlier papers the detailed master’s level course design is described as well as the adjustments of the teaching-learning setting caused by the pandemic. In this paper, our focus is on the qualitative benefits experienced by all parties involved in the information management challenge. Each party gains distinct qualitative advantages from their individual perspective. This is why we can speak of a triple win situation.

We make the following main contributions. First, we explain which skills in the area of learning and innovation are significantly important in the future and how developing these skills is supported through the teaching-learning setting of the course. Second, we explain the different perspectives that the three involved parties have on these skills and derive theses from these viewing angles. Third, we evaluate the theses with an empirical survey and prioritize the benefits of the competition for each of the involved parties to derive an indication towards the triple win situation.

In order to create a coherent representation for the triple win situation as stated in the title, the model of the Future Skills 4C (Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration) is employed. The definitions of the 4Cs are relatively extensive. Nevertheless, the three partners involved - students, lecturers, and Siemens in their different roles - have different interpretations according to their context. This is exemplified by Creativity: while the students in their “generating” role creatively combine previously gained experience and acquired methods to find solutions to the challenge at hand, the company in its “consuming” role benefits from the results that are generated by the students’ out-of-the-box thinking. The lecturers in their role as teachers and coaches activate and support the students in a targeted manner during the creative process.

We identify that through the teaching-learning setting of the course these four Future Skills are implicitly conveyed to the students. Acquiring these skills also supports them to successfully start a career after completing their degree programme. Relevant theses on the 4Cs are formulated in respect to the different interpretations of the involved parties. A first indication is derived from an evaluation conducted by the summer semester 2023 course participants from all involved parties.

The evaluation shows that students see their highest ranked benefits from participating in the course in improving their skills in Creativity and Critical Thinking, whereas lecturers ranked benefits in teaching the skills Critical Thinking and Communication highest. Alongside, Siemens identifies their benefits in Creativity and Communication to be most important.

Keywords:

Project-based learning, university-industry cooperation, master level course, future skills.