Harnessing Experiential Learning on Remote Co-Design Experiences: 24H of Innovation

The Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ETS) organizes an annual international design competition, "24 Hours of Innovation", with almost 850 university student participants from more of 20 universities in all continents. Students are given 24 hours to create an innovative solution to an industrial problem of their choosing, which provides an experiential learning opportunity in creativity and innovation issues. "24 Hours of Innovation" follows a charrette method. This method organises thoughts from experts and users into a structured medium in a way that promotes creativity and the generation of multiple scenarios in a quick period of time. This method is often used in co-design sessions in which a group of designers draft a conceptual solution to a design problem. This study analyzed how support collaboration between participants in different countries and promoting experiential learning. Particular emphasis was placed on ICT tools used by students to find and capture knowledge (e.g. from the web, from experts). Students made use of the Internet, groupware, computers graphic applications and cloud-computing systems during product design and development. Results show that the process of developing new ideas was not sufficiently supported by ICT tools. The data also revealed the important role played by social dynamics in teamwork during the process of peer-to-peer mentoring and learning from experts.

Proceedings of the 9th International CDIO Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 9 – 13, 2013.