YEAR: 2017 - 2020
 
INTERNATIONAL
 
PARTNERS:  ARTEVELDEHOGESCHOOL (BE), Andragoski zavod Ljudska univerza Velenje (SL), Natsionalen ucheben tsentar (BG), JAITEK TECNOLOGÍA Y FORMACIÓN SL (ES), UNIVERSITEIT GENT (BE), Stichting Kenniscentrum PRO WORK (NL).
 
MOTIVATION: Co-creation has become a hot topic in education, especially because of its promising potential to leverage the input of students, fellow educators and experts in the professional field to provide up-to-date course material in a rapidly changing environment. This is especially the case in higher and adult education which is characterized by an increasingly diverse body of students, including learners with additional degrees and prior work experience. Involving students in the co-creation of course material not only actively engages them with the subject material, it also provides a learning opportunity for 21st century skills such as digital fluency, multidisciplinary collaboration and self-management. Furthermore, co-creation also encompasses the input from fellow educators from related disciplines and stakeholders in the professional field, augmenting the diversity of perspectives offered through education. However, co-creating course content often proves to be a highly time-consuming process for the educator, with a lot of time being spent on course management and hence reducing their focus on content. The time bottleneck is peculiarly present in higher and adult education where educators have a wide variety of roles and large numbers of students.

PURPOSE: 

To facilitate co-creation, the CoCOS project will apply the mindset, methods and tools gleaned for open source development to the co-creation of course content. We will share our experiences with and further pilot open source platforms explicitly designed to reduce course management during course co-creation. Using version control technology - typically used in software development - these platforms automatically keep track of what content was created by whom at what point in time. In addition, they provide a hierarchical control structure, allowing the educator to keep (or delegate) editorial control over the final course.

 

The aim is to test this co-creation approach in a wide variety of educational settings. We therefore chose a varied set of partners, including university, university college and adult education partners. Through these pilot courses we learn from each other and the partners will spread their experiences in their local networks.

 

The project will consist of a preparation, test, evaluation and dissemination phase. Partners will be prepared for the pilot courses in a partner training, which will delve into the educational and technical challenges of co-creation. In addition, the partners will be provided with an on-line co-creation environment tailored to their needs. The co-creation approach will subsequently be evaluated during a series of pilot courses in various educational settings. Finally, all training material will be made openly accessible on-line.

 

RESULTS:

The results in the CoCOS project are mentioned below;

• Co-creation conceptual framework: The conceptual framework will form the basis for the on-line training module.

• On-line co-creation environment: Using an open source LMS platform (likely Moodle) a digital environment will be set up, specifically tailored to allow for structured, attainable co-creation by a large set of contributors.

• Method and resources for F2F co-creation training: For the F2F training a set of educational materials will be developed to facilitate the professionalization of educators who want to start a co-creation trajectory.

• Co-creation pilot courses implementation and evaluation: Educators who completed the training will carry out the co-creation methodology in their own courses.

• Learning guide on co-creation guidelines: Guidelines and co-creation do's and don'ts will be developed on how to start a co-creation trajectory in various settings, as those explored in the pilot projects.

• Community based co-creation website: Throughout the project, a website will be maintained to communicate the goal, results and materials developed during the CoCOS project.

 

​

More info? 

First newsletter

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​