Building Inter-Personal Competence in Architecture and Urban Design Students through Smart Cities at a Higher Education Institution

Abstract

As the smart city concept and applications continue to evolve, traditional architects and urban designers are facing an increasingly uncertain future. This paper outlines an innovative educational format to bolster and perpetuate the interdisciplinary nature of architects and urban designers that resonates with both sustainable development (SD) and smart cities (SCs). By applying ‘connective knowledge’ to the concept of interdisciplinarity education, a method was established that uses the SC concept to expand upon and create a bridge between distant disciplines in the context of higher education sustainable development (HESD). As a complementary educational pedagogy to the ‘whole institution approach’ to reduce barriers in higher education institutions (HEIs), this paper highlights an opportunity to apply the SC concept as a basis to construct an interdisciplinary design workshop to focus on building inter-personal competence, targeting university-level students majoring in architecture and urban design. The design workshop used microcontrollers and sensors as these are scalable and easily learnt building blocks of the Internet of Things and SCs. The inter-disciplinary workshop ran for 16 weeks with 14 students majoring in architecture and urban design and electrical engineering. Based on interviews and course evaluations, the experiment was vetted using capacities of inter-personal competence in sustainable development. A series of insights and findings from the design workshop indicated positive initial outcomes that were used to form a set of working criteria for the interdisciplinary design workshop. Future work will include structuring empirical data collection and analysis and expanding collaborations with other distant disciplines such as public administration and social innovation, as delineated by the SC concept.

Green-Smart University Campuses: The Mediating Role of Student Engagement in Enhancing Corporate Image

“…These findings confirm a significant positive impact of the green-smart campus initiative on both student engagement and the university's corporate image, thus providing support for the proposed hypotheses (H1, H2, and H3). These findings are in line with previous research emphasizing the importance of sustainability initiatives in higher education and their potential to enhance students' experiences and perceptions of the institution (Babar et al, 2020;Ha, 2019).…”

“…The observed positive impact of the green-smart campus initiative on the university's corporate image (b = .317, p = .000) underscores the significance of sustainability efforts in shaping the institution's reputation. Students and other stakeholders tend to perceive an institution that prioritizes environmental responsibility as more socially responsible and forward-thinking (Ha, 2019). This positive corporate image not only attracts prospective students but also elevates the university's standing within the broader community and among potential partners and donors (Babar et al, 2020).…”

Interdisciplinarity in Smart Sustainable City education: exploring educational offerings and competencies worldwide

“…First, the findings reveal how the students of the SSC study programs should be able to transcend disciplinary boundaries, perceive SSC problems, and develop expertise on possible solutions and their consequences. These findings fall in line with [25], [35], [37] that support a "blended" approach toward the development of master courses, drawing from the richness and diversity of available content. Our study also revealed that the analyzed programs promote diverse learning environments that cover different dimensions of sustainability, exceed boundaries and involve learners in applying digital tools and methods of data analysis to smart urban development.…”

“…According to UNESCO [37, p. 9], education for sustainable development: converges the Sustainable Development agendas; addresses the environmental, societal and economic dimensions of sustainability; increases stakeholder and local engagement; promotes the whole-institution approach; engages formal, nonformal and informal education; is interdisciplinary; uses a variety of pedagogical and activating methods. This observation is in line with [30], [35], [36], [38].…”

“…The majority of the explored research that analyses SSC study programs and their competencies focus on education for sustainability [30]- [34] or are oriented on analyzing individual bachelor's or master's programs [31], [35]. However, such research rarely touches upon the smartness dimension [36], which is the cornerstone of SSCs.…”