Blog

  • Makerbox

    Makerbox

    By Engage

    What is project Makerbox?

    Project Makerbox, is an online tool for organizing and running small practical problem-solving workshops. The target audience is children in upper secondary school, ungdomsskolen, but it is possible to scale the platform to include both older and younger children.

    The tool itself is a website that contains an openly accessible library of problem-solving tasks you can combine into workshops, typically consisting of 3-4 tasks. Your group of young “Makers” then log into the workshop you, the “Guide”, have created and solve the problems given. Materials and tools used in these tasks are supposed to be in the category “office supplies”, including old soda bottles, bamboo skewers etc.

    Current status of project Makerbox

    During the summer of 2017, two students, Sigmund Holm (computer science) and Tobias Wulvik (product design), from NTNU have been hard at work turning the concept of project Makerbox into a reality. They have built a brand new website, good looking and easy to use. At this point, we are approaching a functional prototype of the website. Meaning that we will be able to start testing the platform in schools, possibly also in other organizations.

    The first tests will be done in collaboration with Rosenborg Ungdomsskole. We will also be presenting a paper at ICED17 (International Conferende of Engineering Design) in Vancouver this August which presents the concept of Makerbox. Sigmund and Tobias has been engaged as web-developers as their summer job, financed by SFU-Engage.

    Where does Makerbox come from?

    The idea which started project Makerbox came during discussions just before Christmas in 2015. Kristoffer Slåttsveens PhD project is focused on educational perspectives based on or inspired from design engineering methods. “Can we come up with a good project for TMM4245Fuzzy Front End which is valuable for this PhD project?”. The question we wanted to answer, was: Can we come up with a set of tasks that can spark the “maker experience” in children. And can we make this in such a way that all you need is contained in a box? Hence, the project name “Makerbox”.

    During the spring semester of 2016, students Truls Nygaard and Georgina Seviour developed this idea into the web-platform concept that is being turned into reality as you read this text. The underlying intention and value of sparking this “maker experience”, is that we believe this community has an extraordinary ability to motivate and help train people’s creative-confidence, a term derived from Banduras “Self-Efficacy”.

    Creative-confidence, is seen by many as relevant in the domains of creative jobs such as product development, industrial~ and product design, architecture, entrepreneurship etc. Behind the scenes of our website, data on how the various “Makers” progress and increase their creative self-efficacy is gathered. Data such as; how long it takes to solve a task, tasks of which categories have been solved, how often hints are used, etc, can be used to research the effect of how practical problem-solving can be used as an educational tool for training the entrepreneurial mindset.

  • NORDTEK Entrepreneurship Conference

    NORDTEK Entrepreneurship Conference

    By Engage

    Engage, The Centre for Excellence in Education, Engage, invites educators from all Nordic technical universities to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim for the annual Nordtek Entrepreneurship Conference. An informal conference where you can meet fellow educators, share ideas and experiences. Being held for the first time in Norway, the Nordtek Entrepreneurship Conference is a great opportunity for local industry to engage in developing change agent education for a better future.

    Engage will develop education for students from all disciplines and professions who will constantly challenge accepted truths and innovate for the better, in both private and public sectors. Engage is a consortium consisting of the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship, Nord University Business School, NTNU Experts in Teamwork, TrollLABS and Spark NTNU.

    These excellent educational programs are each characterized by learning in which students develop projects in the real world and reflect upon their processes. Students in these programs commit to engaging in their learning, taking responsibility for their own learning, and sharing knowledge within a learning community of fellow students, previous students and faculty. Engage will combine, develop and disseminate action-based learning, student-to-student learning, collaborative skills, rapid prototyping and student engagement. We will provide train-the-trainer courses and activities for students in all disciplines in order to increase the number of students in higher education with entrepreneurial skills.

    NORDTEK is a network of the Rectors and Deans of the Technical Universities in the five Nordic countries. Membership requires that you have to have a background in advanced engineering up to the Master’s level and PhD in a technical research field. The members represent 27 universities, more than 120,000 students, teachers and researchers. The conference is free, but you will need to sign up here.

    Time schedule

    12.00 – Welcome to NTNU and Engage
    12:30 Keynote 1 – Industry Bård Benum (Powel) & Ståle Svenning (Trønderenergi)
    13:10 Keynote 2 – Educator Martin Steinert (TrollLabs NTNU)
    13:50 Keynote 3 – Researcher Per Blenker (Aarhus University)
    14:30 Break
    15:00 Working / Discussion groups
    a) Entrepreneurship education Entrepreneurship education – Spark* NTNU Synne Marie Sollie
    b) “Coworking” Rögnvaldur J. Sæmundsson (University of Iceland) and Marius Thorvaldsen (WorkWork)
    16:00 Closing time
    18:00 – Dinner

  • The Journey 2017

    One of the projects Engage have been working with for the last weeks is The Journey, Europe’s largest summer school for climate innovation and entrepreneurship.

    By Engage

    About 360 international students travel through Europe, in either a 3 or a 5 week journey, where they work on green business ideas through this journey for a final pitch in front of a jury the last week. Engage has hosted one of these groups for two weeks this summer at NTNU. 37 students have been given lectures in business model canvas, design thinking, marketing, finances and other necessary tools for building their startup.

    So is this journey all about fun and games? The students seemed to enjoy the summer school and had a lot of fun during their stay in Trondheim, and they even played a few games of table tennis. But it’s not a 5 week vacation where they travel through several European cities. They are a part of a 5 week intense program, with a full time daily program on campus and evenings full of group work. During the last week they have to hand in a 6500 words business plan including a budget and a climate impact analysis. So even though the journey is a fun experience for the students, it`s certainly also a lot of hard work.

    We are already looking forward to next year, when hopefully a new group of engaged students will come to NTNU to learn more about how to develop their business ideas and make the world a better place. There is no small tasks they have signed up for. We asked some of the students what entrepreneurship means for them, have a look at what they answered in the video below.

    The Journey
  • Entrepreneurship to meet the challenges of the future

    Entrepreneurship to meet the challenges of the future

    By Engage

    There was great celebration at Gløshaugen campus in Trondheim on 1 February, when no less than two centres were opened at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). One of these centres was Engage – Centre for Engaged Education through Entrepreneurship. The centre is a consortium comprising the NTNU School of Entrepreneurship, Nord University Business School, Spark NTNU,TrollLABS and Experts in Teamwork (EiT) at NTNU, in addition to other partners from Norway and abroad.At Nord University, Engage will involve different academic environments to stimulate more engaged learning and research activities. Therefore, a separate celebration of the centre’s opening was held at Nord University on 23 March. The event included a presentation of the centre as well as talks and video greetings from key players both at the regional and the national level.

    ‘Work on the opening has already proved important in terms of making contacts and spreading information about the centre in the region’, says project manager Bjørg Riibe Ramskjell from Engage.

    Entrepreneurship – horizontal and vertical cooperation

    The centre’s objective is to educate students who are willing and able to take on the role of change agents in society. This will be done by developing entrepreneurial skills and attitudes in students. The background for Engage is five partners that, each in their own way, emphasise interdisciplinary cooperation through innovation work in real projects. ‘The centre allows for more cooperation across both institution and faculty boundaries.Students, professors and other stakeholders are working side by side on projects,’explains Professor Roger Sørheim, Engage’s centre director. The NTNU School of Entrepreneurship contributes to a high level of student engagement by letting the students start their own businesses in interdisciplinary teams. One example is Assistep, which has since 2012 been developing an assistive device for people who have difficulty getting up and down stairs. The enterprise has now installed its product in more than 100 institutions and private homes.

    ‘This is precisely the kind of drive we want Engage to stimulate in the general student body’, says Professor Sørheim.

    Strong student engagement

    Another good example of student engagement is Spark* NTNU, which is one of the consortium partners. Professor Gry Agnete Alsos from Nord University Business School describes it as follows: ‘Spark NTNU is a student-run guidance service for students with an idea that they want to realise. In addition, Spark* NTNU administers the Pengesprøyten scheme, which is a grant scheme where students can apply for up to NOK 25,000 in funding.’Since its establishment in 2014, Spark* NTNU has considered about 300 business ideas. A group of students at Nord University is currently looking into the possibility of introducing the Spark NTNU model there and adapting it to local conditions. ‘Students’ learning is taking place both inside and outside the classroom. We want to facilitate an outlet for students’ engagement for entrepreneurship and learning outside the auditorium too,’ says Alsos.

    A third example of student involvement is Experts in Teamwork (EiT), which is a compulsory course for master’s degree students at NTNU. In this course,students are placed in interdisciplinary teams to solve real problems. ‘This gives 160 learning assistants and 12 teaching assistants per year the opportunity to train as facilitators. Together with the lecturers, they are part of the facilitator team that plays a key role in the students’ learning in this course,’ says head of EiTBjørn Sortland.

    Engagement is a key word

    Engagement is a key word and basic principle for the Engage consortium. Together, the partners in Engage will develop education that gives students the knowledge and expertise required to meet the challenges of the future, and make them change agents who are willing and able to implement changes and solve problems creatively. Professor Martin Steinert of TrollLABS gave the following description of the research laboratory: ‘This is not a think tank, it is a do-tank.’ ‘This is about putting thoughts into action,’ Sørheim elaborates.