iPOLE – integrated Project Oriented Learning Environment

What is it like to live and work in New York, Mumbai, Zurich, Istanbul or Helsinki? How about Trenton (US), Juinagar (IN), Brugg/Windisch (CH), Eskişehir (TR) or Porvoo (FI)? Should one stay in one’s town or look for work elsewhere? From an individual’s perspective, answering these questions, and getting to know key qualities of a future work place is not trivial. From the perspective of organizations too, providing insights into their work culture and to represent their ‘identity’ to promote themselves is a challenging task. However, such efforts are simply necessary for regional development, to prevent brain drain, and to attract talent.

In iPOLE 2019, project tasks are defined in collaboration with the regional development office (Standortförderung) of Canton Aargau; and are in the context of an upcoming interactive platform called Work Life Aargau. More specifically, we will explore how to profile employers, and how to make the opportunities in the region more visible using qualitative and quantitative story-telling tools. Approaches can be computational, methodological, and/or content/design focused with user experiments. Tools could be, for example, story maps, interactive information visualizations, web implementations, interactive multimedia explorations with video, audio, photography, other visual media such as visual statistics and individual accounts, maybe even explore the potential of VR and AR experiences.

Thus, in interdisciplinary teams, we will design scenarios; implement prototypes; find and test new and innovative ways to profile employers to be used in an online interactive platform. We will, thus, demonstrate new concepts and applications that give an outlook to the future of work-life decisions – only limited by your imagination and creativity.

Students from FHNW apply for the project with their CV and a brief letter of motivation latest on May 27th, 5 p.m. CET. The iPOLE board will give a notification of acceptance latest on June 2nd, 5pm. Please note that —if your application is accepted— participation is mandatory. Please send your application to arzu.coltekin@fhnw.ch.

The iPOLE project is open to approx. 30 students from 3-5 different home universities and disciplines. Students will work in mixed teams of about 6 persons.
The upcoming iPOLE includes students and faculty from:

• University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (as leading house)
• Other (international) universities will be involved (to be announced
  

Application deadline
May 27th 2019, 5 p.m. CET

Virtual Kick-off
September 16^th 2019, 5 p.m. CET (to be confirmed (tbc))
The project starts with a virtual kick-off on video conference (VC) explaining the project, introducing the partners and starting project analysis (approx. 2 hrs).

Physical Kick-off
October 1^st–5^th 2019 (tbc) physical meeting
All team members (students and coaches from the participating universities) will come together physically. We will build the teams, meet our industry partner, give inputs to the process planning and develop ideas within the first workshop. After the virtual kick-off, the collaboration within the teams will go on virtually. Students meet weekly by videoconference, will get intermediate feedback and support by their coaches and develop their projects until the final review.

Review I
October 28^th 2019, 5 p.m. CET (tbc) by VC

Review II
December 2^nd 2019, 5 p.m. CET (tbc) by VC

Final Review
January 17^th 2020 (tbc) physical meeting

Students are expected to contribute approximately 180 hours for this module (“IP5”). Each participating university provides support by a local coach. The costs for accommodation (if needed) are covered. Travel and subsistence expenses are at the students charge, financial support upon request. The participation on all meetings is mandatory.