Abstract:

12 partners from 9 countries in the Danube Region formed a collaborative learning community to design, test, and offer a quality Excellence in Research, Social and Technological Innovation Project Management Programme with the core purpose of increasing the capacity for EU project acquisition, planning, and implementation. The project is funded by the EU Interreg Danube Transitional Programme and lead by The Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), Vienna, Austria. The target audience are young professionals, but the programme is open to all interested learners. The curriculum is composed of five modules and 20 classes—offering information, advice, theories, processes, methods and tools to lead participants to success with their projects. The classes are structured to align with the ECTS credit system in EU universities and participants will earn a Certificate of Completion from the Project Consortium. The curriculum will be piloted during an entire year with three face-to-face events, but is intended to be offered fully online and completed through self-assessment in each step.

The curriculum developers are experimenting with an innovative approach to online learning they call the 5-Door Approach to eLearning. Each class offers multiple entry points to the learning through these doors: The Library (resources about course content), The Forest (reflection activities to integrate the learning), The Café (interactive activities with others), The Playground (playful activities and games), and Self-Assessment (to test the level of knowledge gained and/or skills acquired). This approach is based on the classic theory of Kolb’s Learning Styles (Kolb, 1984) and adapted from Thiagi’s 4-Door Approach (Thiagi Group, 2015). Program participants can walk through the self-assessment door as they get started with a course to either define a focus for themselves while taking the course and/or to simply test out of the course and move on to those courses that provide new learning for them. Behind each door, the learning is tailored for a particular learning style, and participants can either walk through all doors and solidify their learning through repetition in various formats and/or choose the approach that works best for them and dive deeply into the offerings provided behind the chosen door. The intent is to offer many resources behind each door (more than would be needed in traditional learning scenarios), so that participants can choose from a plethora of offerings according to their preferences. They can do a lot of activities, or just a few, or none if they pass the self-assessment upon entry. The purpose here is to optimize the learning potential and give full control about type and depth of learning to the learner, including the option to complete all or just a few modules. Participants can claim the ECTS credit recommendation for each module separately, however, they earn the certificate only if they succeed through all modules. Other innovative methods include design thinking as an approach for empathy-based collaborative learning and the earning of badges instead of grades.

After the pilot phase in 2018/19 the programme will be refined according to the feedback collected, and then offered online, free of charge, world-wide. The consortium will be working with the relevant accreditation authorities to gain accreditation for this program after the pilot phase.

Keywords:

Diverse learning styles, Kolb, project management, innovation, design thinking, badge, 5-door approach.