Topic:

Sustainability, Plastic, Reduction of plastic materials, Waste, Recycling, Environment, Reducing carbon emissions

Duration:

6+ lessons

Learning objectives:

The goal is to empower students to become actors in their educational journey and provide meaning to what they learn at school by building sustainable solutions with their community.

Description of the learning process and activities:

Phase 1. Preparation
Considering local context, students select a locally relevant general topic. Topic can be for  example water.

By individual or group work, students identify some sub-topics, for example floods, water pollution, water saving, water sources, desalination, water shortage, drought.

Students think about the local needs linked to the remaining topics. For example,
- policy makers / authorities (public use)
- domestic water suppliers / civilians / residents (domestic use)
- travelers / travel equipment suppliers (outdoor use)
- farmers (agriculture)
- industries (factory managers)

By combining possible project topics and local needs, students will define a challenge. For example,
- how can we purify water with a portable device?
- how can we utilize sewage in agriculture?
- how to self-check water quality
The final challenge should be open-ended (there is more than one possible answer), meaningful and relevant, practical and feasible within the time frame, skills and tools.

Engaging societal actors: Societal actors are identified and brought into the project from the start. They are anyone who has an interest in, or is affected by, the outcomes of the project. As the project evolves, the group may realize that some important local partners need to be identified. It is never too late to bring someone new on board.

Phase 2. Steps of Living Lab methodology
Co-creation / conversation: Select issues, identify needs and produce a wide range of ideas
- identify the needs and expectations of societal actors
- foster imagination and wild thinking

Exploration: Turn ideas into use case scenarios and prototypes, explore opportunities
- deepen some ideas
- identify the main questions or elements to be tested
- confront the solutions to the real world
- face feedback, unexpected perspectives, new questions

Experimentation: Test in real-life situations
- analyze the experimentation results to validate or improve the solution

Evaluation: Validate, discuss, improve or dismiss the solutions
- analyze the experimentation results to validate or improve the solution

More information:

https://www.schoolsaslivinglabs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/SALL_Roadmap_Living_Labs_Education_FINAL.pdf
https://www.schoolsaslivinglabs.eu/

Other remarks:

SALL - Schools as Living Labs was EU-funded project that aimed to introduce the living labs methodology in schools as a novel technique for the development of open schooling activities linked to science learning. The project engaged in dialogue school communities, research institutions, science museums and centres and spaces of open-learning; together they constructed the living labs schooling methodology.