Objective
This project commits to empower new generations of professionals working in a circular transition with a socio-civic compromise. To that end, we establish the Circular & SOC Learning (CIRC.LE) Hub; a meeting point for students, professors, transdisciplinary experts, society at large, and decision-makers, working together with a circular and sociocivic compromise. In the Circular & SOC Learning Hub, students reflect on challenges by evaluating social and civic implications and become co-creators and active part of the challenge. This humanizing approach is here considered as the perfect complement to the technical skills for a true application of circularity principles. The CIRC.LE Hub creates a multi-stakeholder, participatory, democratic mutual learning and knowledge transfer platform and puts on the table complex dilemmas and “out of the box” ideas for students’ social and civic development and promoting local action and global thinking. This contributes to boosting the concept of the European Engineer. The pilot Circular & SOC Learning Hub will be promoted by the participating Universities and Associated Partners and then grow beyond this partnership.
CIRC.LE specific objectives are: – To deliver the CIRC.LE Hub, a meeting point for students, researchers, professors and all stakeholders working in a circular transition with a socio-civic compromise. – To launch socio-civic (SOC) learning experiences with a global and local perspective, to be addressed by transnational groups of students guided by multidisciplinary experts. – To collect and create quality open educational resources on circular and socio-civic aspects and promote training and reflection. – To deliver best practices to assess students’ circular and socio-civic experiences.
Implementation
The CIRC.LE Hub will annually collect, through open calls, both local and global challenges whose solutions require a spirit of circularity and socio-civic compromise., Based on the collected challenges, various types of SOC experiences will be launched during the academic course. These SOC experiences will target higher education students in technical universities, who will work in transnational teams with the support of professors and multidisciplinary professionals—actors who combine a set of socio-civic and circular economy expertise. The CIRC.LE Hub also puts at the service of students and society high-quality open educational resources, including newly created open knowledge training pills, which enriches the reflective learning process. The SOC experiences enable the discussion and co-production of potential solutions with society, including co-creation and experiential learning, inspire students with participatory webinars by multidisciplinary experts, and culminate by disseminating the work to society in the annual Circular & Socio-Civic Gathering, where students present to the world the circular & socio-civic implications of the challenge. Throughout this event, the participating groups of students—pioneers in the creation of circular experiences that solve real challenges—will contribute to the real transition towards a circular economy. A group of SOC experts will provide feedback on the proposed ideas and reflections. Upon completion of the SOC experience, students will receive official accreditation from the CIRC.LE project. These activities within the CIRC.LE Hub will bring together students, organizations, and society working together for a shared mission: a world that discusses and considers circular & socio civic implications for better solutions to real-life challenges.
Results
The main outcomes of the CIRC.LE project are:
● IO1. Circular & Socio-Civic Learning Hub Virtual Space: Design, Development & Implementation.
● IO2. Guides to Identify, Collect and Classify Circular Challenges.
● IO3. Creation of Socio-Civic (SOC) Learning Experiences that address Circular Challenges.
● IO4. Socio-Civic & Circular Open Educational Resources.
● IO5. Socio-Civic Experiences’ Assessment Protocol. Best Practices. Students will depict their ideas & reflections around the circular challenges in the form of a variety of mediums, including but not limited to short stories, infographics, pitches, games, monologues, and videos. All solutions will be showcased in the CIRC.LE Hub virtual space so that it becomes open knowledge.
