How we enabled highschool students to create the school and work of the future?
The European House Skopje has always aimed to stimulate innovation and progress, especially in the youth. They’ve done so through different collaborative and educational events held in their modern space, designed to encourage and elevate creativity and comfort for the young innovators.
Our partnership began in 2019, and the wheels were set in motion for a spring 2020 design thinking workshop when the global pandemic struck and the plan had to be changed. However, we saw an opportunity to engage the youth from their homes and together, we organized the first EU House Design Thinking digital workshop for high school students, on the topic Design the School of the Future.
The collaboration was so successful that immediately after, we collaborated again to create a 3-day digital hackathon, this time on the topic Transforming the way we work in the new era.
Organize a national collaborative workshop, and a hackathon during a time of social distancing.
Engage the youth to cooperate and create applicable concepts for the future, and encourage their creative development as a result.
The first and biggest obstacle we had to tackle was to find a digital space that would simulate the real life conditions of a creative collaborative workshop. The second biggest challenge was to create the tools that would guide the process for the participants – adapted specifically for the challenge. We found the answers in the platform Discord, and the Design Thinking methodology. With our experienced facilitators, the 30 students divided 8 teams started working together with one goal: Designing the school of the future.
In their journey, the teams also had the opportunity to speak to experienced mentors from different fields, helping them understand the requirements and true potential of their ideas. The workshop had a very notable impact on the participants, for most of which this was the first Design Thinking workshop.
Inspired by their interested, EU House decided to organize another online event with our help – this time a 3-day hackathon on the topic Transform the way of work in the new era, which included another 30 high school students.
60 participants
15 teams
7 facilitators
5 mentors
15 final solutions
