Context and objectives: Today’s young generation will be challenged in their lifetime to introduce solutions to a significant range of challenges related to sustainable practices in everyday life and business towards improving human lives in the present and into the future. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) identify as some of these challenges the development of affordable energy, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, elimination of hunger and poverty, health and education, and preservation of natural resources, among others. Sustainable development challenges are both urgent and complex. The introduction of actions towards their mitigation or prevention will be the result of collaborative work, brainstorming, innovative design, problem solving capacity, and the ability to integrate knowledge from diverse fields while taking into account cultural and community factors. Sustainability education aims at building the above skills while at the same time developing positive attitudes that lead to responsible behaviour. DT4S aims to build awareness, basic knowledge, positive attitudes, problem solving skills, collaboration ability, and ability to synthesize innovative solutions among secondary education students aged 12-16 for preparing them to actively engage in sustainable development practices individually and in their communities as civically minded young adults. Methodology and activities: Methodologically, the project introduces a problem based learning approach that is rooted in design thinking principles and challenges learners to address complex issues. The proposed design thinking framework encourages students to be open minded in precisely identifying the actual, as opposed to perceived, parameters of a given problem and to understand through empathy the experiences of individuals affected by it. It motivates students to introduce through brainstorming, ideation, and collaboration innovative solutions to complex challenges. And it encourages students to validate the effectiveness of their ideas by designing and testing prototypes. In terms of implementation and learning delivery, the project will design and develop an on-line service that promotes problem-based learning in the context of design thinking. The proposed learning intervention will foster the development of awareness on sustainability principles, will reinforce basic knowledge from diverse curricula subjects (STEM and more) by asking learners to apply it in practice in the context of wider, high level problems, and will help build a range of transversal skills that learners will need as adults including problem-solving capacity, self-motivation in tackling significant obstacles, and optimism that they have the power to design reasonable actions to 21st century issues. The active learning platform will provide services for both students and educators. For students, it will encourage innovative thinking for addressing challenges related to sustainability goals of global interest inspired by the UN SDG. It will promote long-term engagement with education through gaming elements that foster motivation and reward collaboration and group work. For educators, the service will support the design and introduction of sustainability challenges and will allow the monitoring of student engagement, interaction, and progress. DT4S will further build instructional process supporting content in the form of learning activity cases that demonstrate how to best integrate the proposed active learning methodology and digital learning tools into the classroom. The proposed design thinking and problem-based learning methodology, digital learning tools, and instructor support content will be validated in practice through the engagement of external groups of students and their teachers in Turkey, Greece, Portugal, Estonia, and Spain ensuring that the outputs address the needs of secondary education students. The feedback from diverse cultural, educational, economic environments will ensure the European relevance of project results. Impact: The expected impact of the DT4S project is facilitating the modernization of education by supporting the uptake of innovative problem-based learning design and ICT technologies that help bring education to the digital era. The project further supports student long term engagement with the learning process by demonstrating the links of education to modern challenges stimulating student interest and helping prevent early school leaving. Finally, in the 21st century sustainability skills are considered key, basic competences that employers desire for ensuring that business practices are in line with international sustainability policies. To this end, DT4S promotes the employability of students by linking skills developed in school to industry requirements.
DT4S aimed to build awareness, basic knowledge, positive attitudes, problem solving skills, collaboration ability, and ability to synthesize innovative solutions among secondary education students aged 12-16 for preparing them to actively engage in sustainable development practices individually and in their communities as civically minded young adults. Today’s young generation has been challenged in their lifetime to introduce solutions to a significant range of challenges related to sustainable practices in everyday life and business towards improving human lives in the present and into the future. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) identify as some of these challenges the development of affordable energy, sustainable cities and communities, responsible consumption and production, climate action, elimination of hunger and poverty, health and education, and preservation of natural resources, among others. The introduction of actions towards their mitigation or prevention has been the result of collaborative work, brainstorming, innovative design, problem solving capacity, and the ability to integrate knowledge from diverse fields while taking into account cultural and community factors. Sustainability education aims at building the above skills while at the same time developing positive attitudes that lead to responsible behaviour.
Partners were interested uptake and implement the design thinking(DT) and sustainability principles within technology-based learning design and development activities, as well as software development projects, improving the approach and the efficiency of the work carried out. The project enabled the partners to consolidate its network, and bring solid contributions to their European and international working groups. The DT4S project promoted the organization’s organization of DT and sustainability principles.It helped organizational capacity to develop digital educational services. It fostered collaboration with other European organizations on designing, implementing, and evaluation digital learning services. It promoted links with the educational communities at local level,including schools and regional educational authorities for secondary education.Partners had the opportunity to join forces of Educational Technologyand sustainability to advance on the interdisciplinary field.It was an added value as it had the opportunity to explore new teaching tools, focusing on the innovative methodology of DT. It allowed them to expand its network contacts, through direct contact with the target group-secondary school studentsandteachers.