Mutual Capacity Building through North-South Collaboration Using Challenge-Driven Education

Abstract

The urgent need for actions in the light of the global challenges motivates international policy to define roadmaps for education on all levels to step forward and contribute with new knowledge and competencies. Challenge-Driven Education (CDE) is described as an education for Sustainable Development (ESD) approach, which aims to prepare students to work with global challenges and to bring value to society by direct impact. This paper describes, evaluates and discusses a three-year participatory implementation project of Challenge-driven education (CDE) within the engineering education at the University of Dar es Salam, UDSM, which has been carried out in collaboration with the Royal Institute of Technology, KTH in Stockholm. Conclusions are drawn on crucial aspects for engineering education change through the lens of Activity Theory (AT), where CDE is brought forward as a motivating ESD initiative for engineering faculty and students. Furthermore participatory co-creation is notably useful as it aims to embrace social values among the participants. Also, traditional organizational structures will need to be continuously negotiated in the light of the integration of more open-ended approaches in education.

Challenge based learning in higher education– A systematic literature review

“…In two articles (Meyer, 2018;Valenzuela et al, 2018) theories on experiential learning and teacher beliefs are used to discuss educational design projects in business education and engineering. In Högfeldt et al (2019) Challenge-Driven Education, a version of CBL, is framed by Activity theory. The argument for using activity theory is that the implementation of CDE in engineering education is complex with a risk of ending up as an extracurricular activity instead of a broader educational change process: Through the lens of Activity theory, it is revealed that with the implementation of CDE a negotiation is initiated related to the norms and the values of what engineering education really is as well as what it should look like in the future (p. 27).…”

Relationship between collaborative learning, need satisfaction, and student satisfaction with a blended project-based learning course

“…learning, and case-based collaborative learning (e.g. , Goncalves Quelhas et al 2019, and Högfeldt et al 2019. Thürer et al (2018) states that there is a need for more research and development on how to assess the learning of key competencies for sustainability, and that is the scope of the here presented study with a particular focus on engineering education (EE).…”

We Learnt a Lot: Challenges and Learning Experiences in a Southern African—North European Municipal Partnership on Education for Sustainable Development

“…The questions raised and discussed here focus on how the participants in the project team expressed their learning outcomes from being a part of the partnership. Some of the learning outcomes from this study can help to develop mutual partnerships in other contexts [38,39]. In the following paragraphs, some mutually beneficial experiences for knowledge formation and future capacity development are presented.…”

“…Educators worldwide have little support and training for the work that sustainability implementation processes imply, according to Högfeldt et al [38]. Expectations of higher education teachers are on strengthening the abilities to rethinking learning progress, challenging power relationships in learning and "digesting how sustainability thinking and practice articulates" in different contexts and professions [38] (p. 5). Accordingly, rather than focusing mainly on theoretical lectures on the SDGs and ESD, teachers should be encouraged to undertake didactical work with educational development to transform education in practice.…”