Lars-Olof Johansson

Like a snowball: Adding layers of knowledge Enchanting student work with student input

Internet of Things (IoT) seems to be a popular term nowadays, for business, society and teaching alike. Teaching students about such concepts and more importantly, making them aware of the many competency components (often called KSA — knowledge, skills, abilities) required in the development of IoT systems, services and products has been a major aim in the teaching design presented in this paper. The snowball metaphor symbolizes added layers of input, comments and suggestions delivered by Belgian, Swedish and Chinese students respectively, to peers with different backgrounds (study level, subject major, etc.). Open-platform exercises using Arduino kits are used as starting points and reports. Conceptualizations and suggestions are carried through the snowball “chain”, which ends nearly two years later. Knowledge components are delivered e.g. through lectures. Among skills developed are practice in receiving input from and delivering output to groups different also in culture, knowledge, etc. Abilities include a demonstrated (and graded) proficiency in combining the acquired set of components, as demonstrated in workshops, discussions and reports, and in a proposed feedback loop to Sweden from China (not yet implemented).

A Boundary Practice Perspective on Co-creation of ICT Innovations

Research has shown that collaboration and co-creation among different groups of stakeholders add complexity and challenges to the innovation process. In this paper a study of co-creation in a multi-stakeholder innovation process is presented. The co-creation is explored and described from a boundary practice perspective. The empirical data presented in the study is based on a user-centric innovation project, Free2Ride, where researchers, developers and members of two equestrian clubs co-created a piece of ICT safety equipment consisting of a transmitter (on the horse) and a receiver (application on a smartphone) to be used by equestrian club members during their everyday riding activities. Three episodes were extracted from the empirical data and presented in the paper. From these episodes the researchers have identified four characteristics of the spanning of boundaries in co-creation from a boundary practice perspective. One of the contributions in the papers is a description of boundary practice-spanning. The research approach adopted in the study is the action case approach.