Smartness Comparison Among Different Age Group Students in an Integrated School: The Potential for Design and Management

Abstract

The empirical research documented in this paper took place in a school ecosystem and considered 7th–9th-grade students and 10th–12th-grade students in a bottom-up approach to nurture the knowledge needed to understand the relation that is established between the educational community and school. The reported work contextualizes and explains the smart learning ecosystem strategy and describes the research method used to involve and gather stakeholders’ motivations and sense of optimal experience in the school ecosystem. This particular paper tests the capability of having qualitative comparison smartness studies among different school stakeholders in the same (place and institution) school ecosystem. The qualitative research procedure, smart school questionnaires, data gathering, and analysis will be shared in the context of the study that took place May/June 2018 in the José Estêvão Aveiro School (Portugal), namely with the younger students (7th–9th grade), n1 = 157 and older students 10th–12th grade, n2 = 108. The comparative analysis exercise leads to the potential for technology-mediated solutions driven by co-design initiatives and suggests some smart school management issues.