CO-CREATION

IN PRACTICE

#fab4+1 

Odisee University of Applied Sciences

In co-creation with four Brussels secondary schools, a group of students enrolled in the Bachelor of Secondary Education programme of Odisee University of Applied Sciences, Brussels campus, realised the #fab4+1 project week for 300 pupils. This week was intended to encourage pupils in secondary year one to choose a subject cluster that chimes with their talents. By collectively developing the project week and carrying out the activities, the teachers and students became acquainted with each other’s educational approaches and the various cultures in place at the participating schools. For all the participants, this close collaboration has opened up multiple opportunities for exchange and informal learning. Rather than in a trainee capacity, the students participated in the capacity of co-worker, which boosted their sense of ownership. The project week has afforded them learning opportunities that they would not generally have during work placement.

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 International Summer School Sustainable Management 

Odisee University of Applied Sciences

The Sustainable Management International Summer School of Odisee University of Applied Sciences rallies the business community, NGO managers, and students to raise their awareness of the added value of sustainable management and to enhance their sustainability competencies. Multi-disciplinary teams from Flanders and other countries all over the world formulate sustainable solutions and recommendations regarding current business cases for which the companies and organisations concerned are unable to find a solution (wicked problems). The collaboration involves formal, non-formal, and informal learning processes. By reference to a range of methodologies and tools, the students systematically map out a sustainability case; they review and test realistic future scenarios, on which they reflect in concert with the companies at several moments in time.

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Design for Impact  

LUCA school of arts

Design for Impact is a new track (professional master class) in the Visual Arts programme of LUCA School of Arts. The emphasis is on having students acquire soft skills in order to embark on co-creation with the professional field: critical self-reflection and being able to use such methodologies as design thinking, artistic activism, social and society-centred design. 

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Challenge Week 

THOMAS MORE

In both the first and the second semester, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences organises a Challenge Week. For one week, students collaborate on a topical, actual, and meaningful issue. Assignments (submitted by external employers) are aimed at rendering students aware of the role played by the media in societal issues. This encourages students to apply prior knowledge, skills, and attitudes, whilst providing the principal with useful insights to be developed further. 

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PAUW 

Erasmus Brussels University of Applied Sciences and Arts 

The PAUW (Partners in Authentic Workplace Learning) work placement at the Erasmus Brussels University of Applied Sciences and Arts is the pre-eminent programme component in which partner schools and teacher-training programmes meet and reinforce one another. The PAUW project fosters the (cultural) shift in which the professional field is increasingly regarded as a fully-fledged extension of the learning environment and expands its engagement in work placements beyond merely offering practical training positions. The programmes’ ultimate goal is the joint training of students through the PAUW work placement.

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BACK 

Skill Tree-method

LUCA SCHOOL OF ARTS

LUCA School of Arts has used the Skill Tree method (similar to a mind map) to visualise the ideal curriculum in concert with students and the professional field: ideas are represented in the form of a branched tree. 

LUCA School of Arts

Multi-camera (LUCA): using co-creation as an efficient basis for designing professional education in a challenging technological industry

PARTNERS: LUCA SCHOOL OF ARTS, Videohouse, NEP Belgium, Fly Away, DB Video, Play, VRT, Stage Track, Riedel

In concert with companies active in the audio-visual sector, the programme is producing students who command the proper high-tech audio-visual competencies for embarking on a career in this sector immediately upon graduation. The companies can recruit new staff who are all set to start work, and the programme can teach the students to work with the technological infrastructure provided by its partners, which it could otherwise never afford. The programme can take advantage of the up-to-date expertise of the sector, thus producing graduates who fully meet the rapidly evolving requirements of the professional field. Students easily find employment in the sector.

Position of Multi-cam in the TV-Film-Video programme


In addition to the option of going on an exchange under the Erasmus programme in the first semester of the third year, the film programme at the Narafi Campus is offering four tracks within the PRACTICAL WORK 3 - Workshops & Assignments. Students may enrol in one track of their choice.

1. Fiction – elective track

2. Multi-cam – elective track

3. Non-fiction – elective track

4. Erasmus exchange


Several developments taking place over a time span of a few years have resulted in the momentum to roll out the 3Film Multi-cam elective track:


Since the INRACI film programme’s relocation to the RTBF premises in 2017, the TV studio on Jupiterlaan has been taken over by the Narafi Campus film programme. As the full costs for the studio would henceforth been borne by LUCA, the management has urged for optimising the use of the TV studio.


Feedback meetings with the professional field made it quite clear that the knowledge and skills of the new graduates who ended up in the sector were no longer in keeping with the requirements of the sector. According to the professional field, the relevant companies still needed to invest substantial sums in the training of their new employees. This has prompted the conclusion that our graduates were no longer ready for work immediately upon graduation. As a result, we have decided to adapt the curriculum.


Subsequently, during the summer of 2018, the outdated image and audio direction rooms were fully renovated.


Concurrently, during informal meetings, students enquired about elective tracks in order to be able to specialise.


Consultations during the academic year 2018-2019 revealed the need for expanding the audio training programme to include 1BA Film, whilst the teaching staff requested that the Multi-cam programme be expanded to include 1BA Film and 3BA Film, thus spreading the learning pathways over the three years.


The final KOPERA report (KOPERA is the method we use to monitor the quality of our programmes) lists a large number of suggestions to improve the programme and to introduce elective tracks. New trends must be sustainably and systematically embedded in the curriculum.

In addition, the curriculum reform launched by the Education Council encouraged the elaboration of elective tracks, research, cross-over and inter-disciplinary work.


Within the programme components of the domain-specific unit, room is provided for elective tracks in which students pursue a specialisation from their own practical perspective.

The organisation of the teaching-learning environment is aimed at student-centred study tracks. This enables students to take more responsibility and allows them more liberty in the choices they make in their study track (for the master’s programme, this was initiated in January 2018).


In the second semester of that same academic year, 2018-2019, all this resulted in a framework for the multi-cam track, in collaboration with and at the explicit request of the professional field.

Until then, the co-creation partnerships involved a number of technical service companies from the multi camera sector (Videohouse, NEP, Fly Away, dB Video, and Play), VRT broadcasting company, and Riedel intercom manufacturer. New partner companies are continually being prospected.


The collaboration involves a form of co-creation in which the track is substantiated by the professional field and the programme as partners and in close consultation. In multiple respects, this is a win-win situation for both the partners and the programme.


The multi-cam track is focusing intensively on the latest high-tech developments within the multi-cam professional field. In addition, it devotes ample attention to the acquisition of the 21st century competencies that are expected by the professional field.


On the one hand, the programme is providing several workshops and training courses of its own accord. These take place in its own TV studio and address such topics as network systems and streaming.


On the other hand, the partners are responsible for several programmes that are characteristic of the respective partner’s identity, focused on such topics as shading, set-up, and installation of multi-camera set-ups on site.

Furthermore, the programme includes broadcasting, in which the students – supervised by teachers and staff (head of technology department) – prepare and record an event.


This track, finally, offers room for accommodating several work placement hours.


Training courses

  • Materials and workflow, technical service companies
  • Putting up and dismantling broadcasting set-ups on site
  • Fibre technology, applications and use
  • Practical network applications within a multi-cam environment
  • LSM operator, image mixer, camera operator, video assistant


Events (these are proposed to the students on condition of availability, planning, financial implications, copyrights, and feasibility; the students select one):

  • MUSIC BROADCASTING: concerts by the Music programme at the LUCA Lemmens Campus and livestream concerts in collaboration with V.Z.W. Artists Unlimited;
  • SPORTS BROADCASTING: live broadcasting of the Flemish Topsport Finals in Leuven and streaming on social media;
  • TV SHOW: depending on the collaboration, we will record an existing TV format in a professional TV studio, for example, De Slimste Mens Ter Wereld [The Brightest Mind in the World], in collaboration with Videohouse and Woestijnvis;
  • FICTION: several scenes from an existing fiction series will be recorded in a multi-cam environment, supervised by an experienced fiction director (collaboration with VRT)
  • IBC Convention: the students visit the IBC Convention and come in contact with the latest high-tech developments.

Evaluation activities


In a permanent evaluation process, the supervising teachers assess the students with respect to attitude, technique, and creativity during the workshops, training sessions, and events/assignments. The first exam period comprises a personal evaluation session. The partners from the professional field are involved in the assessment of the final project. They score the students’ final projects.


Added value

Students

  • The students experience the track as an added value;
  • The programme is taught in a high-tech professional environment;
  • In the broad-based programme, the track accommodates the specialisation option requested by students;
  • It helps students find trainee posts with the partners;
  • It enhances the opportunity for students to find a job with one of the partners;
  • During their studies, students actively build up a professional network;
  • Incoming Erasmus students are more easily accommodated in the elective tracks;
  • Outgoing students have a well-defined framework from which to depart;

Teaching staff

  • Teaching staff can exchange expertise and insights in the collaboration with colleagues from the professional field;
  • Staff development and expansion of professional knowledge beyond teachers’ own experience;
  • Keeping abreast of the latest technological developments;

The programme

  • The programme is taught in a high-tech professional environment;
  • The programme’s own infrastructure is cost-effective;
  • The programme is able to introduce its students to the latest developments;
  • Optimum use of the TV studio;
  • Costs are shared;
  • The track ties in with the university college’s policy direction;
  • The tracks follow the attainment targets and the 21st century competencies to be acquired;
  • The track results in the development of a reporting procedure;
  • The programme can accommodate a higher number of transferring students;

The professional field

  • The Multi-cam programme meets the requirements of the professional field and is open to rapid adaptation;
  • The ties with the professional field are strengthened;
  • Participating companies can scout out the proper profiles faster;
  • Newcomers can set to work in the professional field more quickly; less need for investing in specific in-company training.

Other

  • The unique nature of this track enhances the charisma of the university college.

Challenges & opportunities

Interdependence


Mutually acknowledging that the partner commands certain competencies that you lack. You need one another, you complement one another in order to achieve your common goal.


The programme lacks certain very recent technological expertise because developments in the professional field and in the technological domain advance at a rapid pace. The price tag is too steep, yet the programme is anxious to harness said expertise, not only by having students collaborate but also by having experts from the professional field transfer expertise to the students in an educationally effective manner.

  • How can we create an adequate educational framework to allow experts from the professional field without any teaching experience to share their expertise nonetheless? What are viable models with which the professional field would be comfortable?

Commitment

  • What is a good partnership format for the professional field to kick off the collaboration? Would it be better to start off without any form of agreement, on the basis of trust, and then to evolve to an effective agreement?
  • How can we motivate partners to observe the agreements made? What constructions will work for them?
  • How can we commit partners to a co-creation project, even if more recent commercial assignments could overrule the agreements made? How does a programme secure airtight commitment from the partner companies?
  • Whilst programmes require an annual schedule (or they need to work with modules and short-term workshops), such scheduling is difficult to set down with partners in the field, in light of their own – oftentimes unpredictable and changing – planning.
  • What is a graceful way to end a collaboration that is not living up to your expectations (i.e., leading to frustrations), but which you hope to take up again one day?

Common goal


Each party has its own interests that converge in the project (common goal): companies want well-trained students whom they can put to work virtually immediately; the programme can utilise the companies’ high-tech infrastructure which is far beyond its budget and can train students in an authentic, high-tech environment with support from experts in the field.


Interorganisational trust


It is not a matter of course to create trust between competing partners in the professional field, whom you are gathering together to achieve a common goal in collaboration with the programme: well-trained students and thus staff who can rapidly start work.

  • What does the professional field need to be able to collaborate with competitors and a programme on the basis of trust?

Open communication and transparency


Clear agreements on each party’s input in terms of content, technology, facilities.

With a view to creating trust: setting down with what each party can go public, or how each party can use the “products” of the collaboration.


General current challenge:

  • How can we have partners visit our campus or students work in the partner companies under Covid-safe conditions?

Contact

Professional Bachelor of Audio-visual Technology: Film, TV, and Video

Narafi Campus, Brussels-Vorst


Gert Keyaerts, Gert.keyaerts@luca-arts.be


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