HIPing Innovation Education in University. Introducing Socio-Technical Concepts for Cross-Disciplinary Teams in Applied Computer Sciences

Learning terminologies and concepts of the socio-technical innovation is for many master students in computer science a trivial task. This is the case for both, students and teachers alike. For example, one can present to students a series of academic articles, which start with sentences such as: “There is no consensus on the definition of innovation in the computer science literature”. At the end of the course, we, as educators, can examine the students on their individual ability to reflect on the strengths and weakness of definition “X” as compared with definition “Y”. This type of examination can also be used to demonstrate to external reviewers of the course that we have achieved the courses intended learning objective (ILO) and provide evidence that the students after taking the course can reflect on the process of innovation. However, the question remains if the students have achieved the main ILO of the course which is that “they can contribute to the innovation process”, as required by Norwegian high education authorities. This is one of the general competences a Master Students in Norway should acquire while completing a Masters at a Norwegian university [1]. In this poster we describe our findings and ongoing work on a cross-disciplinary team innovation exercise that we have held over the last two years. The goal of these exercises is to improve students’ general competences and ability to contribute to the innovation process in their future work lives.