Rapid developments such as urbanization, globalization, the rise of the Internet of Things, robotization, artificial intelligence, and 3D-printing are changing our society as never before. They also are our future more and more uncertain. How will people respond to all these changes? Which new products and services should be developed based on these new technologies? And how do we make sure that these technologies and products benefit our society non only economically but also make our society more social and our planet more sustainable? These new technologies ask us new questions and new questions require new answers. These answers will not be given by old or current approaches employed by those who are now in charge. Rather, our students, the ‘business and social leaders of the future, will or perhaps should be the ones who guide our society into this unknown future. Are they able to do that? Are they trained in looking at future developments and translate these into innovations that lead us to a more responsible future? In our opinion they are not, and we hear from our stakeholders similar opinions. The good news is that students are indeed interested in the future, and making that future far better than it currently is. But the bad news is that they lack the required sills and capabilities, making them also less consciousness of or oriented to the future since people tend to not worry about something that they can’t influence. And so do our students, unfortunately. The objective of this project is to develop teaching modules that enable our students to look to the future (apply foresight) and to develop innovations based on those futures that are not only commercial sound, but also are socially right and are sustainable. In addition, we want to develop an instrument by which we can monitor the ‘future consciousness’ or ‘future orientation’ of our students during the period that they follow the courses we develop. We expect that the level of future consciousness or future orientation of our students will increase due to the foresight courses they follow and by developing future-proof concepts and innovations. In particular, this project will carry out the following activities: - Translating the concept of ‘Grand Societal Challenges’ into a workable concept that we can use as inspiring point of departure of our foresight and innovation processes. - Developing teaching modules on foresight and innovation. - Teaching other teachers to apply the developed courses. - Developing and applying an instrument to monitor the ‘futures consciousness’ or ‘future orientation’ of the students taking the courses. In this project we use the methodologies of ‘sustainable backcasting’, ‘causal layered analysis’ (CLA), and ‘responsible innovation’. The first one is a foresight methodology aimed at developing a so-called ‘normative vision of the future’ that reflects a future that someone wishes for. Such a vision is not primarily aimed at imaging a realistic vision but it is exactly the wishfulness of it that can make explicit what needs to be done (in the present) to make it realistic. CLA is more analytic and is aimed at uncovering the assumptions people have about the future thereby strengthening the quality of their (normative) vision of the future. Responsible innovation states that innovation processes should be designed in its early stage in such a way that it can be expected that the final outcome of the innovation process is contributing to a more ‘responsible society’ in terms of social wellbeing and sustainability. Instead of waiting for the final result of an innovation process and hoping that it will do good to us, responsible innovation claims that we have to design our innovation processes in such a way that social and sustainable considerations are taken into account upfront. Lastly, we use the theories of ‘future consciousness’ and ‘’time perspective’ to test how and to what extent our students are more interested and better equipped to look to the future. Both theories are able to do that on a personal level enabling us to measure individually whether or not our students feel better and are better capable of applying foresight and be prepared for the future. The results and subsequent impacts of this project are that we educate students that are ready for the drastic changes that are to come. Even more, they will be capable of managing those changes in a desirable way, improving the lives of many and making our world more sustainable.
The rapid technological development and digitalization is a trend of transformation both for economic and social life at globe. The pandemics started at the beginning of 2020 also accelarated this process. The future which we are going through is also a changing one comes with the problems. The changing tools (technological trends) and the global problems (grand societal challenges) can be seen as a threat for current generations but on the other hand they create further business, social and economic opportunities for the younger ones. During the preparation of the project before submission, the project partners with this approach aimed to develop teaching modules that enable students to look to the future (apply foresight) and to develop innovations based on those futures that are not only commercial sound, but also are socially right and are sustainable. In addition, the partners also planned to develop an instrument by which it is possible to monitor the ‘future consciousness’ or ‘future orientation’ of the students during the period that they follow the courses developed within the project. In the previous three years, the project partners worked on creating the methods, content and materials for "Foresight" courses, developed the teachers' manual for these materials to be used efficiently, started classes at the home universities with students to apply to course in pilot level, organized three intensive programmes (one for teachers and two for students) to test the effectiveness of the materials in international level and developed a monitoring content to measure the success of the tools. The course materials are started as presentations but for the MOOC and the last online intensive programme (because of the pandemics) the materials also created as videos by partners. There were two multiplier events organized (midway conference and final conference - both online) and also dissemination and management activities were followed as mentioned in the application form. During these events 20 teachers from 5 partner universities participated to the IP1-Teach the Teacher. 99 students participated to the IP2-Pilot Programme in Antwerpen and 45 students participated to the IP3-Online. The midway conference in June 2020 and final conference in May 2021 were both organized online and broadcasted via youtube and zoom. There were 165 registrations in midway conference and 83 of them from Hungary were budgeted. But in the youtube there were 316 followers in the time. For the final conference there were 15 local participants in the zoom and the rest were the students. The project partners organized 6 management meetings including the kickofff. One of them was organized online due to pandemics but the rest of the meetings were face-to-face. Apart from these general meetings the project partners organized meetings to manage the pandemics crisis over the project every month from April 2020 to July 2020 and from September 2020 to January 2020. The pandemics and its impact on physical meetings had a negative impact for the coordination in the beginning but by the September 2020 the project partners used all online tools to cowork on the project. The methodology and content was applied 2 semesters (Fall 2019 and Fall 2020) on students. In fall 2021 even the project ended still 3 partner universities are applying the courses as electives at their universities. The project helped students to develop projects, business ideas and social entrepreneurship ideas that may be applicable in the near future. In Netherlands and in Turkey we have seen that 4 applications by the participating students about the global problems started to be applied in the field of healthlife and wellbeing and climate action. The developed methodology and course materials are still in use in partner universities and disseminated in academic platforms with the conferences that the project partners attended. The partners also working on a new project to apply Erasmus Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education program to use the results of the project outside Europe. The project was disseminated with the social media, academic conferences, local media at partner universities and with publications disseminated in country-level.