Bridge activities. This phase of the module (the “less then symbol” in Figure 1) concerns the so-called bridge activities. These activities connect scientific, conceptual and epistemological knowledge and practice such as inquiry skills with the issue of the future. Design principle In the design of the bridge activities, special attention has to be posed to exploit the connection between the scientific topic, developed in the previous activities, and the rest of the module. This is a critical and delicate moment for the design, since it implies a deep analysis of the scientific topic so as to flesh out its potential to develop, from science, future-scaffolding skills. They can refer to the causal models implied in scientific topic, system thinking, or its social, political, ethical, economic implications. The design of the bridge activities has to be carried out together with the previous and the following ones. Within the summer school, the students were directly involved in the analysis of a complex citizenship context of urban planning taking into account the social, political, economic implications that their decisions have.
Bridge activities. According to the design principle, the bridge activities have to exploit the connection between scientific, conceptual and epistemological knowledge and practice with the issue of the futures. Operational recommendation: when designing your activities, keep in mind that the main goal (epistemological goal) is to lead the students to recognize that the epistemic practices like modelling, arguing, posing questions…, typical of the scientific discourse, are thinking tools that can be used to analyze, in the present, any complex context. Examples from… Artificial Intelligence module “Analysis of a complex citizenship context of urban planning: what social, political, economic, ethical implications can a decision on Artificial Intelligence (AI) have? What stakeholders, values, scientific, technological, social issues are involved in a decision concerning AI? This activity guides students to turn the scientific concepts related to complex systems (concepts developed in activity 1-1bis-6) into skills to analyse in depth a problem and to enter the issue of the future. In order to reach the goals, the “town of Ada” was built, that is the description of an invented town whose Mayor has to address a complex urban planning problem related to the development of Artificial Intelligence. This activity and the following ones encourage students to analyse and recognise the complexity of a problem (the multiplicity of the stakeholders involved, the complex systems of their relations, …). Moreover the students are guided to share, discuss and negotiate, with their classmates, the values, dreams, concerns and hopes that characterize, more or less explicitly, their analysis of a complex situation and their process of decision making.
Bridge activities. The active cooperation in the different BRIDGE working groups is paramount for all partners with a market-oriented business and requires prioritisation, planning and coordination from the core of each H2020 project. GDHVI will coordinate the participation of MUSE GRIDS partners in the different BRIDGE working groups (currently - data management, consumer engagement, regulation, and business models) and newly established task forces (local energy communities, joint communications and replicability & scalability), and will facilitate the exchange of information emerging from these working groups as well as the collection of information to feed in to the working groups. The BRIDGE network has already been relied on for the previously mentioned workshop in M7, focused on energy communities. Co-organising the event with other EU-funded projects allowed the participants to share knowledge and know-how from several points of view, e.g. regarding regulation, market, and social impact of the proposed policies. A BRIDGE networking event will be organised (around M11), to correspond with the dates of existing BRIDGE meetings in Brussels. The objective of this event is to get as many BRIDGE projects as possible together, in a more informal environment, to encourage networking and the sharing of ideas and ‘problems’. BRIDGE meetings are currently organised twice a year in Brussels, Belgium, and include the individual working group meetings and a coordination/management meeting. A joint workshop/roundtable will also be organised at the appropriate time (around M36, depending on BRIDGE activities/priorities and life cycle of projects involved) to include a selected number of BRIDGE projects. This event will help share information and practical experience from different projects in cross-cutting areas such as business models and consumer engagement in order to identify synergies and xxxxxx collaboration between projects focusing on similar issues and challenges.
