Abstract:

The KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the University of Dar es Salaam UDSM have sucessfully developed a new educational model based. The Model comprises the following building blocks: Integrating societal challenges into the regular curriculum, close collaboration with external stakeholders 'the challenge owners' through the design thinking methodology, international and cross disciplinary student teams that develop solutions to the formulated challenges, teacher training modules that support the pedagogical learning and interaction with external stakeholders. The formulated challenges as well as the proposed solutions shall contribute to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as formulated by agenda 2030.

The ambition of the program is to develop student and teacher skills that can tackle the challenges of our time, like the sustainable development goals. The program is developed through a strategic partnership of KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the College of ICT of University of Dar es Salaam, UDSM supported by a STINT grant (Swedish foundation for international cooperation in research and education). External stakeholders like the Dar es Salaam water and sewage authority, DAWASA, have defined challenges like clean water supply of Dar es Salaam. Students and teacher develop actionable problem statements in a design thinking process together with DAWASA, the external stakeholder. Student teams of UDSM and KTH develop proposed solutions to the formulated challenges in their final year project. Implementation of the proposed solutions by external stakeholders generates steps towards sustainable development. In similar fashion, students from UDSM come to Stockholm KTH to participate in challenge based courses developing solutions of the sustainability challenges of the Swedish society.

The key contribution to society are students that have become confident of their skills and ability to work for a sustainable future, an academia that interacts directly with external stakeholders, integrating their challenges into the learnign curriculum and societal stakeholders learning to interact with the university. The model is transferable and scalable. The presention till report the sucessful implementation of the project at UDSM and KTH and report learning outcomes and impact on society.

A teacher training book, guide to challenge driven education has been developed prior to the project start, which has been used in the project and which can be downloaded from the KTH web:
https://www.kth.se/social/files/56e2b5f1f276541778ae27f5/Guide%20to%20challenge%20driven%20education.pdf

Keywords:

Challenge Driven Education, Innovation Capacity for Agenda 2030, Design Thinking, EU-Africa Partnership, academia-society collaboration, peer learning, team wor.