SYMPOSIUM

In continuation of the TRANSFORM cooperation project between Johannes Kepler University Linz, University of Applied Arts Vienna and Danube University Krems, the public symposium titled “The Art of Transformation” intends to reflect on innovative pedagogic formats, inter- and transdisciplinary bridge-building methodologies and new technological tools for the future of education and on how to prototype and test these in the realm of academic teaching and research. Concerns about employability prospects for contemporary students underline the urgency to rethink the wider ecosystem of future-oriented higher education. To this end it is necessary to identify the kinds of qualifications and possible occupational fields in the face of rapidly changing and globally interconnected work environments.

What are “21st Century Skills”? Can creativity and innovative strength, dealing with complexity, cross-disciplinary “out of the box” thinking, critical reflection skills, communication skills and a fundamental understanding of the functions and possible uses of digital technologies help? Higher education is called upon to design offers for the requirements of tomorrow.

The TRANSFORM cooperation project aims to dynamize established disciplinary self-awareness and practices with the common goal of developing future-oriented, inter-university, inter-disciplinary and technology-aided teaching, and learning formats. The goal is to demonstrate that the challenges of developing and applying digital technologies, human-centred products and services, and sustainable materials cannot be considered in isolation from the cultural context or independent of issues of identity and governance but are rather symbiotically linked.

The event in Vienna will reflect on the relevance of the arts in relation to the formal sciences.

Each of the three days is divided into morning sessions, where faculty members of the three collaborating institutions discuss and reflects the topics internally, while the afternoon sessions are open to the public and critical reflections from international experts in the field.

Exemplary artistic works, strategies and methods will foster innovative discourse and learning environments for topic-oriented work in groups, which will be further deepened by impulse lectures. The initial situation and specific framework conditions of the individual partners are worked out in a model-like and didactic way. So-called Transformation Labs allow experimental and methodological prototypes to be developed in advance.

What are “21st Century Skills”? Can creativity and innovative strength, dealing with complexity, cross-disciplinary “out of the box” thinking, critical reflection skills, communication skills and a fundamental understanding of the functions and possible uses of digital technologies help? Higher education is called upon to design offers for the requirements of tomorrow.

The TRANSFORM cooperation project aims to dynamize established disciplinary self-awareness and practices with the common goal of developing future-oriented, inter-university, inter-disciplinary and technology-aided teaching, and learning formats. The goal is to demonstrate that the challenges of developing and applying digital technologies, human-centred products and services, and sustainable materials cannot be considered in isolation from the cultural context or independent of issues of identity and governance but are rather symbiotically linked.

The event in Vienna will reflect on the relevance of the arts in relation to the formal sciences.

Each of the three days is divided into morning sessions, where faculty members of the three collaborating institutions discuss and reflects the topics internally, while the afternoon sessions are open to the public and critical reflections from international experts in the field.

Exemplary artistic works, strategies and methods will foster innovative discourse and learning environments for topic-oriented work in groups, which will be further deepened by impulse lectures. The initial situation and specific framework conditions of the individual partners are worked out in a model-like and didactic way. So-called Transformation Labs allow experimental and methodological prototypes to be developed in advance.