Learning City: Scientific Monitoring / LCity2030

Aims and Tasks

In 2017, the city of Gelsenkirchen had reached the second stage of the contest "Future City 2030+" ("Zukunftsstadt 2030+") of the German Federal Ministry for Research and Technology with the contribution "Learning City – Education and Participation as Strategies of Socio-Spatial Development" ("Lernende Stadt – Bildung und Partizipation als Strategien sozialräumlicher Entwicklung"). It was planned to transform ideas, wishes and visions developed during the first stage into tangible activities. For this purpose the special interest groups "Strengthening (out-of-school) Education and Learning Centres", "Strengthening Urban Districts, Quarters and Networks" and "Learning by Using New Media" were set up. Each group was accompanied by a group of researchers; IAT accompanied the special interest group on new media.

This work was interrelated to research threads at: participatory software development, e-learning, learning organizations, knowledge society and citizen commitment. Within the framework of the topic "Civil Society and Commitment" of the research department spatial capital, the scientific interest of the IAT focused on the further development of the new subtopic "Citizen Science". In addition, IAT was interested in transferring previous research results from knowledge sharing to citizen science issues, where new findings about knowledge society were expected.

Approach

The main task was to attend the meetings of the group on "Learning by Using New Media", in a moderating way. Scientific input had to be provided, whilst the members of group were supported in developing aims for their work and to strive for them in a stringent way. Taking part in a mid-term and a final conference as well as the documentation of the work results in an interim and a final report were top off IAT’s participation in this project.

The contribution of the special interest group was to develop the concept of an avatar for Gelsenkirchen. The aims are to facilitate to locate the different places of learning in the city, to network and to motivate pupils to make use of the various offerings. Gamification and competition structures seemed to be a suitable approach for the target group of pupils and their teachers.

In 2018, the city of Gelsenkirchen applies for further promotion by the Ministry for Research and Technology in the third stage of the contest.

The results of the projects are presented on the website www.deinevisionfuerge.de.