Abstract:

The digitalization and automatization are spreading rapidly and reflecting on all levels of the society (EU2012). This is an important goal in education and concerns especially students in applied sciences. Robotics e.g. in healthcare demands special competences and new contents in curriculum. Literature divides robots: medical robots, institutional robots, personal assistive robots, care robots, service robots and social robots. Robots enhance also remote online connection or offer contents as games, interaction and discussions (Mataric 2015).
The purpose of this article is to find out how research project can be the context and new way to learn competences about service robots and concept development. The focus is on how to plan and implement the new joint course in master degree level. The content and the process will be presented through a case study of how student learn in real life situation. This study is a starting point for planning and conducting Living Lab research towards achieving new competences during master degree studies at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Social learning is based on the cyclic process and iterative relationship between user representation, design and appropriation (Williams, Stewart and Slack 2005). Social learning is similar as the basis of action research approach. Both require engaged cooperation during the process with the actors in real life contexts.

Laurea offers 12 Master´s degree programs (90 credits). The participant students are studying in three master's degree programs: Service Innovation and Design, Security Management and Leadership and Management in Health care and Social Welfare. The degree includes 30 credits of program-specific core competences, 30 elective studies and a thesis of 30 credits. The core competence is supplemented by Laurea's joint offer of complementary studies, in which the student can select 30 credits of management and development studies. It is also possible to select elective studies from the core studies of other programme. Research development and innovation, working life orientation and extensive network of stakeholders are deeply linked in studies. (https://intra.laurea.fi/en/laurea/studyprogrammes/master/Pages/default.aspx)

In this study, master students are actively participating in research project with users and professionals for achieving and co creating new competences of service robots and concept development. The basis of the article is on the experiences of how research project is applied as a learning context for master students. The project is called Robots and Future of Welfare Services (ROSE) that is funded by Strategic Research Council, Academy of Finland. The main project adopts a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to study how advances in robot and perception technologies allow product and service innovation and renewal of welfare services, when such services are developed jointly with users and other stakeholders. (www.aalto.rose.fi)

Keywords:

Design, learning, research, service robots.