inos-project.eu | Tips to boost learning in open science, citizen science and open innovation activities

Open science (OS), citizen science (CS) and open innovation (OI) improve the quality of science and innovation. They also promote public engagement with science and technology, openness and active citizenship. More and more, higher education institutes (HEIs) are getting involved with organising such activities, such as hackathons, datathons, service jams, knowledge cafés, fablabs, game labs and innovation sprints.

Many OS/CS/OI activities involve some form of learning or knowledge transfer. Often, such activities are used to improve skills and public knowledge on important topics. Learning also occurs when stakeholders of different backgrounds collaborate on a project and need to acquire new technical and soft skills to facilitate the collaboration. Learning is critical to OS/CS/OI activities. The overall educational, scientific, innovative and social impact of these activities would be optimised if the learning components were grounded in solid pedagogy. Currently, there is the opportunity to expand and improve the HEI curricula of OS/CS/OI activities. The INOS Project aims to enhance the impact of OS/CS/OI activities by offering pedagogical support to HEIs and other organisers of relevant activities.