Yggdrasill
Design and entrepreneurship education are often characterized by trying to create real-time learning (design-methodology based) flows in time-pressured frameworks involving real stakeholders or collaborators. This kind of experiential learning (Kolb, 1984) includes a process in which the student is taking charge of both the group and the individual's learning, steering the process and still reaching their goals in a collaborative learning situation. This can involve challenges like “wicked problems”, high levels of complexity and multiple layers of dilemmas in the problem-solving. All this can generate emotions impacting the learning and self-development processes - sometimes exposing the student to the emotional extremes and bringing the student as close as possible to their limits, bringing into mind, that educational psychology theory points at how developing a sense of performing valuable and controlled actions can improve the student motivation (Pekrun, 2006) These learning processes’ could create new insights on a deeper level, such as “Who am I?”, “What can I do?” and “What do I dare?”. (Lackeus, 2017)
The present review of the definition of entrepreneurship as a “new value creation” could very well include the design-educations in a learning-orientated definition of entrepreneurship rather than opportunity-creation definitions. (Blenker et al., 2011). “When someone creates something that is both novel and valuable for others and when that person also learns and develops profoundly from the undertaking, people tend to label it as entrepreneurship”. Lackeus (2020) describes the value-based entrepreneurship definition as “creating new kinds of value is a much broader activity type than creating a new organisation or a new business opportunity and can be seen in many people’s “everyday practice” in all societal sectors’’ (Lackeus, 2020, p. 941)
Most of the research on entrepreneurship and design education has focused on how we make our students reflect (think) and perform (act) in terms of entrepreneurial or designerly behaviour. But lately, Lackeus (2013, 2016a, 2017) has come up with a study of emotions as a potential indicator of the student’s status and performance. Lackeus described how three kinds of emotional events 1. interaction with the outside world, 2. uncertainty and ambiguity and 3. teamwork experience were linked to the student’s entrepreneurial development.
By using a holistic and emotional view of entrepreneurial learning and competencies, Lackeus’ studies show how emotional learning events are central to understanding how students become entrepreneurial and act towards the challenges facing them. The use of a variety of methodological strategies to discuss this with Higher Education students is crucial in developing new didactics for ESD. The basic principle is therefore using a participatory, democratic engaging evaluation of students’ comprehension of how they perform and work with sustainable development in their studies and when designing. The Yggdrasill Concept uses participant observation (with the researcher as a lecturer) and dialogical learning (Meijers, 2009) and classroom ethnography (Owens, 2012) when employed.
Yggdrasill wishes to implement a new didactical approach to teaching designers how to be aware of how emotions impact our dedication and our development of competencies over 2 years. Yggdrasill consists of four core elements:
1. A new experimental framing of teaching, in which emotions can work as accepted enhancers as well as restrainers of sustainable (SDG) learning, for both students and teachers including a “manual - description”. (Emotional Learning)
2. A personal Yggdrasill Box provides students and teachers with a reflection tool and frame for conversations about emotions, memories and learning processes.
3. An open process as a series of emotional surveys (diaries, padlet and analyzer) which will try to establish an understanding of how we can use an understanding of emotional learning in the future.
4. The establishment of a durable, long-term relationship between the student, an emotional object (the box) and the teaching/institution and its academic facilitators.
Developed by Associate Professor, PhD Fellow, Thomas Østergaard, 2019-2022. Contact info; Thomas; thos@via.dk. Graphics; Carsten Skovlund.
Article about the Yggdrasill and Emotional Analogous Data research project with ELISAVA: https://tidsskrift.dk/FECUN/article/view/130241/175995
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