News Story

Promoting Partnerships among Universities, Schools and Research Centres for Smart Citizenship

Alexandra Okada, Tuesday 23 Jun 2015

The Open University hosted the 15th International Conference on Technology Policy and Innovation (ICTPI) on 17-19 June 2015. ICTPI’15 conference brought together leading representatives of academic, business, and government sectors worldwide to present and discuss current and future issues of using science and technology.

The theme of ICTPI 2015 focuses on ‘ICT and Science in a Complex World’. This event attracted large audience interested on: Education Futures, Smart Cities, New Economy, Data Security, Energy and MK: Enterprise Growth. Professor Enrico Motta presented the project MK:Smart including ‘MK Data Hub’, which supports the acquisition and management of vast amounts of data relevant to city systems from a variety of data sources. Annika Wolff gave a talk on ‘Bringing Smart City Data Skills to Schools’ as part of MK:smart project.

Ale Okada introduced the project Urban Inquiries, which is based on various international and national projects. It applies pedagogical approaches such as scientific dilemma (ENGAGE), data inquiry (MK: Smart) and inquiry based learning technologies (weSPOT, LiteMap and nQuire-it). Urban inquiries aims to support educators and learners to develop authentic inquiry based projects and promote Responsible Research and Innovation. She also presented the paper developed with Annika Wolff and Alex Mikroyannidis: ‘Promoting partnerships among Universities, schools and research centres to foster Responsible Research and Innovation for smart citizenship’.

This pilot research discusses three ‘urban inquiries’ projects on: Energy Consumption, Electric Cars and Solar panels, which were developed by Stantonbury school. This study indicated evidence on co-inquiry based learning focused on the collaborative construction of scientific questions. It showed how Personal Learning Environments supported young smart learners to develop collective inquiry and share outcomes. Secondary pupils co-authored 3 videos, 3 posters for international conference and 1 conference presentation through ‘urban inquiries’.

Urban Inquiries, RRI and Partnerships from Alexandra Okada