Co-creation of an online living lab for a water management design course

Project introduction and background information

To create the living laboratory, three missions to the Jordan Valley were conducted to identify educational demand, scope for co-creation and collect / shoot all audio-visual course materials. At least five relevant stakeholders in Jordan needed to be mobilized for active participation as problem owners and informants. The process of creating a living laboratory was captured in a ‘making of’ clip and instructional manual allowing other interested teaching communities to engage with generic challenges for using a living laboratory in blended courses.

An optimal blend is achieved through a mix of classroom instruction, knowledge clips featuring local stakeholders in the case study area, ‘live’ interaction with local experts and problem owners, virtual transect walks (in 3D), and e-modules with relevant, up-to-date data sets for all fields of expertise (maps, measurements, GIS data). To expand participation beyond regular Wageningen Master students, a multiple dissemination strategy was proposed to attract students from other study programmes offered by Universities in NL and Jordan and land and water management professionals to participate and/or co-create the course. Such interaction is deemed critical to engage with different kinds of expertise in a multi-cultural setting bridging the science-society divide.

Objective and expected outcomes

The course will be based on a living lab, which will be co-created with partners in Jordan. Even though the students cannot be present in the area, the field work will be replicated as much as possible, by using video's. virtual transect walks and 'live' interaction with stakeholders. The course will be improved in the following three ways: 

1: Involvement of real stakeholders in Jordan. In the course they act as problem owners and resource persons / local experts. 

2: A sustainable living lab by means of co-developed and co-financed project work and student exchange 

3: The development of an international classroom, which allows students to exchange viewpoints and opinions, contributing to decolonizing traditional case study work in a developing context.  

Results and learnings

1) An online living lab was developed to increase the problem-oriented nature of the course. The overall student satisfaction with the course is very high, and the sustainability of the course is guaranteed for the coming 5 years. The course does require a lot of active involvement from us teachers, to remain in contact with our stakeholder and counterparts in Jordan. 

2) Field work from a distance is created through an online educational platform. Students expressed that they sometimes felt as if they were in Jordan, when they were watching the videos and exploring the 3D transect walks. This really helps them to better understand the local context. Some of the stakeholders were also available for interviews during the course, adding to the feeling of working in a real-life context. 

3) Co-creation of designs jointly with local stakeholders and experts, to facilitate boundary crossing and decolonize water management expertise. Several stakeholders from Jordan acted as problem owners and resource persons within the course. This allowed for a real-life situation for the students, and provided a source of expertise outside of the lecturers from WUR. The problem owners highlighted in the evaluation that the work done by the students also helped them to look to their case studies in a new way, with fresh insights. This shows that there is a good exchange of knowledge and experiences between the problem owners and student groups. 

Recommendations

The recommendations for other interested teachers / didactical experts who also like to develop an (online) living lab is summarized in 7 points in the tips & tricks document, which can be found attached to this post. 

A making of video, which describes the process of developing our living lab, is available here: https://wur.yuja.com/V/Video?v=726849&node=3567023&a=98631622

Practical outcomes

The innovation project has led to a revision of the course 'Water Systems Design' which is part of the curriculum for the master International Land and Water Management. The information is presented to the students through the means of an online interactive map, which can be found here: https://edusources.nl/materials/l4l:oai:library.wur.nl:l4l%2F11646/jordan-valley-tour-agricultural-water-management-in-the-jordan-valley