Build to think, build to learn: What can fabrication and creativity bring to rethink (higher) education?

Abstract

With the global digital transition, we are witnessing, it is clear that learning is no longer done in isolation and without the use of many digital resources. However, the teaching approaches that are still dominant in higher education are largely marked by old paradigms. Without saying they are wrong; however, one can only witness that they no longer fully correspond to the world we live in and should consequently be adapted. In this paper we propose to introduce the Design Thinking and akin approaches found in FabLabs in order to define a learning space complementary to the traditional teaching experience of higher education, which are rather organised in silos: faculties, departments, degrees. Such a place, which we call a FacLab and which can be described as a physical space extended by a virtual digital space, can be seen as a FabLab embedded in the academic environment. It would favour transversality, encounters, co-construction, collaboration, serendipity and most importantly the putting into practice of transverse skills around the mainly digital factory of the tangible and the intangible, supported and sustained by the methodologies resulting from Design Thinking and related creativity approaches. Here we present our approach and the first developments we have implemented.