Becoming a DBE teacher. Teachers’ understanding and needs at the beginning of the transition to design-based education

1 Introduction

The world of work is changing rapidly, and the labour market is faced with the challenge of responding to more technologically driven and ill-defined problems (Guaman-Quintanilla et al., 2023). These changes call for redesigning the higher education pedagogy to foster the development of skills and competencies needed in the world of work. Design-based education (DBE) is an innovative learner-oriented approach to teaching and learning that supports students as they learn to cope with the real, complex, and rapidly changing world. DBE is an educational concept which has an influence on what and how students learn, but also how teachers teach and how the learning environment is organized. This study focuses on the teachers’ perspective at the beginning of the transition to DBE pedagogy in a University of Applied Sciences in Finland. The objective is to unfold teachers’ current understanding of DBE teaching for more focused teacher training and support in planning the implementations.

Häme University of Applied Sciences (HAMK) implements DBE as a university-wide pedagogical approach. This is because the university aims to prepare students to successfully embrace the rapidly changing labour market and society, where creativity, adaptability and analytical collaborative and self-regulative skills are needed more than ever. HAMK uses the design thinking method to co-construct its DBE pedagogies, to collaboratively set the foundation for DBE and to develop its DBE implementation. HAMK is now involving its students, teachers, management and researchers in the collaborative creation of the DBE pedagogical model and a multidisciplinary learning environment for it.

World Economic Forum (2023) report estimates that approximately 25% of jobs will change by 2027, 69 million new jobs will be created, and 83 million old jobs will disappear. Thus, generic competencies (Tuononen et al., 2002) are crucial in UAS education today and tomorrow. According to an annual career-monitoring survey, the top 10 generic competencies considered the most important at work include the same competencies as in different areas, although with a different emphasis (Kullaslahti et al., 2021). These competencies are the ability to learn and adopt new things, stress tolerance, the ability to adapt to new situations, initiative, self-direction, the ability to work independently, time management skills, communication skills, negotiation skills, and problem-solving skills (Kullaslahti et al., 2021).

Research conducted at HAMK on early DBE implementations postulates that generic competencies, such as collaboration, communication and constructing and applying knowledge, are central competencies that develop during DBE (Lahdenperä & Jussila, 2022; Lahdenperä et al., 2023). This indicates that DBE supports the development of business skills, enabling students to develop versatile business skills and know-how in working in professional communities in their field. DBE is built on the idea of proactive development, where students are responsible for exploring and discovering solutions that anticipate the future of the professional field, applying existing knowledge of the field and using research and development methods in the process. In DBE, students also have opportunities for learning to learn, identifying strengths and areas where they need to improve their competencies while learning in professional communities and making use of digital technologies. When DBE is organised to involve international and multicultural students and/or professional fields, students can develop their multicultural know-how and learn to operate in international environments and networks. The generic competencies are needed in all jobs, most likely even in those that do not exist yet. These changes and their application are reflected in the recommendations of The Rector’s Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences (ARENE) regarding the common competencies (Auvinen et al., 2022). The ARENE recommendations are illustrated in Figure 1.

There are other reasons why HAMK is moving towards DBE in addition to responding to the labour markets’ needs and the ARENE recommendations. These include but are not limited to improving the wellbeing of students, supporting the development and growth of ‘the better makers’ and revitalising the campuses (HAMK, n.d.).

The aim of this paper is to unfold teachers’ understanding of multidisciplinary DBE and their needs at the beginning of the transition to DBE. We engaged 61 teachers in two workshops to unfold teachers’ current understanding of DBE. As HAMK is now starting to implement DBE pedagogy across the entire university teachers need support and know-how in practising DBE.

2 Teachers’ role in design-based education

DBE is based on self-directed, contextual, constructive and collaborative learning principles (Geitz & Sinia, 2017). Although DBE is a pedagogical approach, its roots are in the real world of work and in practical design and designerly thinking. Design thinking has been illustrated in many ways, for example, as the creation of artefacts, as a reflexive practice, as a problem-solving activity, as a way of making sense of things and as a creation of meaning (e.g., Johansson‐Sköldberg et al., 2013). DBE promotes the pedagogies of the trialogical learning process between education, practical research, and industry. DBE enables students to learn by developing new solutions to complex real-life issues offered by and derived from labour market organisations and industry (Geitz & Sinia, 2017) and to direct their own collaborative learning processes. These real-life challenges are the starting point for learning. Students learn collaboratively in open physical and virtual learning spaces using iterative design thinking processes as their tools for providing structure to their learning while they construct meaningful and innovative solutions to the challenges. Applying design thinking in DBE has the potential to significantly improve innovation outcomes (Liedtka, 2017; Prud’homme van Reine, 2017).

DBE promotes the socio-constructivist ideas of collaborative new knowledge creation and authentic learning by co-creating new solutions and opportunities (Guaman-Quintanilla et al., 2022; Scheer et al., 2012; Kauppila, 2007). Therefore, the role of teachers in DBE is different than that in traditional classrooms.

2.1 Teaching using socio-constructivist pedagogies such as DBE

Teaching using socio-constructivist pedagogies such as DBE involves two aspects: ‘socio’ and ‘constructivist’. Constructivist pedagogy argues against education that is centred around specific disciplines and subjects, which are the result of breaking down complex real-life phenomena and problems into small and isolated parts (Scheer et al., 2021). According to Scheer et al. (2021), the logic behind concentrating on one aspect of the phenomena and ignoring others is to make it more manageable for teachers. However, the downside of this approach is that splitting up complex phenomena into isolated disciplines and subjects makes it hard for students to recognise and understand the links between facts and phenomena and the connection between teaching and real-life contexts (Scheer et al., 2021). In ‘un-constructivist’ learning, the students end up learning what the teachers think is relevant to the phenomena, which is often measured by an exam at the end. In constructivist pedagogy, however, students learn in interaction between humans and their natural and social environment (Dewey, 1916). In practice, this means that students are given an authentic real-life problem or challenge relating to some phenomena to solve and that they get to interact with the natural and social environment where this challenge or problem needs to be solved.

‘Socio’ underscores that learning takes place together and that solutions are co-created together and not by individual students. Combining ‘socio’ and ‘constructivist’ signals that knowledge is constructed together and that the co-creation of solutions involves not only the students and teachers but also the stakeholders involved in the problem or challenge. In DBE, this is referred to a trialogical process—a trialogue between students, teachers and professional fields (Geitz & Geus, 2019). Scharmer (2019) has described this expanding process of (socio-constructivist) learning as moving from traditional teacher-centric learning (1.0) to output and efficiency-centric learning (2.0) to outcome and learner-centric learning (3.0) and beyond to co-creative and ecosystem-centric learning (4.0), where the extent of social interaction increases in each phase.

According to Geitz and de Geus (2019), DBE is a further development or redesign of the existing concepts of problem-based learning (PBL) and competence-based education. PBL has a strong focus on knowledge construction (constructivism), acknowledging the need to develop both practical and theoretical knowledge and skills, but is lacking in the integration of the working field in the learning environment and the social requirements (socio-constructivism) that come with it (Geitz & de Geus, 2019). DBE requires that socio-constructivism takes place in a trialogical process with teachers, students and the professional field (Geitz et al., 2023). In doing so, DBE teaching and learning adds value to the learning of teachers, students and the professional field by developing multidisciplinary knowledge (Geitz & de Geus, 2019) and general competences (Lahdenperä et al., 2022) and creating social value (Geitz & de Geus, 2019).

Organising learning in multidisciplinary teams is necessary so that multidisciplinary knowledge can be constructed. Involving the professional field is necessary so that social value can be created and so that students can develop general competences in interaction with professionals (Lahdenperä et al., 2022; Geitz & de Geus, 2019; Lahdenperä & Jussila, 2023). This makes DBE different from PBL, where the problem may not originate from the professional field and can be defined from the perspective of a single discipline or subject matter. DBE, by design, takes on complex and ill-defined authentic challenges as the starting point of the learning process.

2.2 Teachers’ role in DBE

The role of teachers in authentic, open challenge-based UAS–industry project pedagogy is significantly different from the traditional work of teachers and is aligned with the principles of authentic learning environments (Herrington et al., 2010). Teachers are seen as facilitators rather than instructors (Scheer et al., 2012; Kunnari et al., 2021). In a previous study involving teacher–facilitators experienced in facilitating authentic challenges in university–industry collaboration, the following changes to teachers’ tasks listed in Table 1 were recognised (Kunnari et al., 2021).

Table 1. Changing tasks in different teaching and learning approaches (Kunnari et al., 2021).

Tasks in traditional teacher-centric learning (1.0)	Tasks in co-creative and ecosystem-centric learning (4.0)
Individual tasks in teaching	Collaborative tasks in facilitation
Working alone	Working together in open physical and digital environments
Detailed planning and preparing of teaching in advance	Making a pedagogical manuscript and concurrent co-creation of the process
Instructing and assessing separate tasks and assignments	Continuous guidance and assessment
Lecturing, presenting, explaining	Listening, observing, asking questions, being present
Focus on students’ knowledge and skills	Focus holistically on students’ competencies, self-efficacy and creativity

While the items on the left side of Table 1 are more manageable for teachers, the items on the right side are necessary for learning in authentic environments, where stakeholders concerned with the problems or challenges are involved in the co-creation of the solution. As the world of work is continuously changing, it is not possible to determine beforehand (e.g., a year or three years before) exactly what technologies, methods and data will be required and demanded by industry to solve their complex challenges. In the case of complex and ill-defined challenges, they cannot even be solved by individual disciplines or subject matter but require collaboration between teachers and students from different disciplines and a variety of subject areas. Working alone is not an option when dealing with complex and ill-defined problems. Teacher collaboration and co-creation of the project implementation and teaching are also required.

Designing the right types of activity systems can have immediate observable effects on learning (Pant, 2012; Amabile, 1996). Real open tasks from the real world of work allow for novel solutions and real concretisation. The multidisciplinary composition of teams ensures an attitude change from ‘I’ thinking to ‘we’ thinking, if the team shares a common, engaging, and compelling goal. These types of teams allow for complementarity of competences and enable students to recognise their own expertise. (Hero & Lindfors, 2019). Developing a novel concrete solution (like a working prototype) provides an intention and an objective (Object, Engeström, 1987) for the DBE activity and design thinking provides the methodology, ie., a tool for teams to solve the open challenge in a user-friendly and concrete way (Engeström, 1987).

Teachers can be unwilling to ‘open the hidden agenda’ of pedagogical aims, but in DBE, it is often a good idea. In authentic co-creation and challenge-based UAS–industry projects, the learning subject is not only one individual student, as all parties in the network are faced with the same authentic, open, vague problem (Hero, 2019; Hero & Lindfors, 2019). The ‘learning subject’ is rather a collaborative network consisting of, for example, students from different fields (and even from other grades and institutions), work-related representatives as partners, teachers from fields different than one’s own, the end-users of the developed product and other teams. ‘What’ is learned relates more to growing and ‘moulding’ as a professional—that is, professional attitudes, skills, personal characteristics and knowledge. In addition, the content of ‘what’ is learned relates to the design process itself, the collaboration while co-creating and ‘something that is not there yet’ (Engeström, 2016). Process knowledge transfers easily when entering the world of work, whereas discipline-specific substance knowledge may become old (Hero, 2019; Hero & Lindfors, 2019). Learning to learn things that are not yet existing is necessary for future-proof professionals. Open challenges allow for students and their teams to co-learn while they co-create. Unfortunately, the things they will need to learn are hard to define in advance.

2.3 Previous research on teachers’ experiences in implementing DBE

Research on teachers’ perceptions of implementing design-based pedagogy is rather scarce. Previous research on socio-constructivist design challenge-based type pedagogies pays little attention to teachers’ roles, actions, and their relation to student and team learning (Gallagher & Savage, 2020; Leijon et al., 2021). However, several concrete teacher actions and roles can be listed based on the most recent literature. Teachers experience that they are acting as coaches rather than instructors, they are adaptive and offer expert guidance in the construction of knowledge, they advise students on skills and knowledge that might be of their benefit, on the possible range of learning resources, on the design of a learning plan, on grouping design activities, and on teamwork and direct instruction and assessment (van den Beemt, van de Watering & Bots, 2023). Depending on the complexity of challenges, teachers find a balance between openness and scaffolding by acting as coaches, co-learners, and co-creators (van den Beemt, van de Watering & Bots, 2023). According to Van Diggelen et al. (2021), good coaching during design-based learning addresses expectations and manages learning outcomes, encourages students to articulate their underlying thinking, the rationale and how the process is unfolding, facilitates the design process, challenges students to develop insight, builds a safe and stimulating environment for dialogue, contributes to students’ own team coaching abilities, and approach the activities as a continuous dialogue in conversational coaching interventions.

According to Retna (2018), teachers perceive that design-based pedagogies positively hold the potential for enhancing skills such as creativity, problem-solving, communication, and teamwork as well as empowering students to develop empathy for others within and beyond the community. They also experience several challenges, such as inadequate resources, time constraints, fear of poor grades and the difficulty of shifting to a new way of teaching and learning that differs vastly from traditional teaching. Teachers are often uncertain about what it means to implement design-based pedagogies in their educational settings (Henriksen et al., 2020).

Several factors related to individual participants can be highlighted for teachers to recognise while tutoring co-creative multidisciplinary teams: the responsibility levels students can handle, students being dependent on teacher guidance, what student motivation relates to, and how much conflict and how many contradictory situations students can handle without losing motivation. (Hero, 2019; Hero & Lindfors, 2019) If teachers are available to students, they have the opportunity to monitor the experience and ease the pain of conflict and contradiction if needed. According to Hero (2019), the role of teachers in student-led multidisciplinary innovation projects is not to make themselves not needed. Teachers should promote deep comprehension of the process; monitor and ease the pain of conflict if it threatens motivation; offer assessment tools and help in recognising gaps in individual competences and development needs; promote more future-oriented, concrete and implementable outcomes; facilitate solution development networks; and help bridge innovation and entrepreneurship planning if the opportunity emerges. The role of teachers is crucial in defining the ‘innovation climate’ (Newman et al., 2020), as teachers are often the first ones in the room and are seen as having the power to facilitate the situation.

To conclude, the role of teachers is not to become invisible and disappear but to be present, facilitate, translate the project work into competence development and offer an opportunity for students to become seen and heard. Teachers facilitate the organising of the activity system and the collaboration with the work-related partner and ensure the motivation of each party. This is not an easy task. Teachers as coaches need to be skilled improvisers, able to respond in the moment to unpredictable situations that occur during the processes of DBE. (Van Diggelen et al., 2021). Teachers appear to need competencies for coaching and scaffolding of students as they face these complex situations (Van den Beemt & MacLeod 2021; Pepin & Kock 2021). Therefore, teachers need professional and peer support in building their know-how.

3 Aims and methods

As HAMK is now moving to DBE pedagogy, teachers must be educated in DBE. They need support and know-how in practising DBE. The aim of this paper is to unfold teachers’ understanding of the multidisciplinary learning environment for design thinking and their practical needs at the beginning of the transition to DBE. This knowledge is needed for planning teacher training. This is important, as the pilot DBE implementations are about to start. The teachers may need support in their collaborative planning and teaching. After the three-author collaborative evaluation of the current challenges involved in the transition to the pedagogical approach of the UAS, the following sub-questions were selected to inform the main research question:

• What do you need for your DBE as a teacher?
• How will your teaching be different if you take up DBE?
• What are the steps of DBE? Why?
• Why and how will multidisciplinary projects be implemented?

Methodologically, this study is a step in larger labour that aims at co-creating DBE for the entire HAMK. Design-based research methodology stresses including the perspectives of participants as co-designers in the development of new theories, artefacts, and practices (Easterday et al., 2014). This is critical to ensure that the model is contextualised and meets the demands of transition, implementation, and further iterations. This research discusses a fragment of this extended design process, bringing value to the transformation explored throughout the journey on which HAMK is embarking. The complexities of developing a new pedagogical approach that serves not only students, teachers and work-related stakeholders but many other participants in the context in which a UAS operates demands a variety of slants and approaches. A co-design participatory process can better deal with such complexity (Zamenopoulos & Alexiou, 2018). Moreover, design-based research methodology is characterised by an iterative and collaborative approach to developing and evaluating the given problem and mission (Amiel & Reeves, 2008).

This study is part of a collection of actions and evaluations of the different phases in designing HAMK’s new DBE practices. In particular, this investigation focuses on the ‘defining’ and ‘the empathising phase’ (Rossi, 2021) of the DBE development and concentrates on understanding the perspective of teachers. After this study, there will be several DBE pilots that serve as the prototyping and testing phases in the iterative development work. Even though its procedural nature is often presented linearly, these phases are flexible, and the principles adjustable (Rossi, 2021).

3.1 Data collection

The data collection was organised during one-hour session workshops for HAMK teachers across disciplines and teaching units. The first one was held at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands during a study visit (N = 23 UAS teachers) in English. The second was held in Finland as part of the DBE teacher training kick-off (N = 38) in Finnish. The total number of participants in the workshops was 61. Participants were divided into four groups, distributed at tables in the same space (Figure 2).

The group composition was randomised and aimed at fostering diversity and interdisciplinary teacher collaboration. Each working table had previously been assigned one of the sub-research questions given above. Participants were given approximately 10 minutes to discuss and document their responses to the assigned question within their initial groups. Subsequently, the intervention introduced the feature of shuffling participants among the groups three times. This rotation process exposed participants to various perspectives and fostered a collaborative environment that leveraged diversity (Woolley et al., 2010).

The collaborative nature of the co-design method has been shown to be the most efficient approach for involving teachers in formulating expectations or demands and proposing novel practices. Its potential in collecting data for research purposes lies in its adaptable and flexible nature. Co-design accommodates a variety of engagement forms, catering to those who prefer collaborative teamwork as well as those inclined towards independent work. Zamenopoulos and Alexiou (2018) proposed a taxonomy based on how people connect or work together. Each of their categories leads to different ways in which co-design is performed, making the act of co-design highly driven by the context and circumstances of the challenge.

The four strategies for co-design outlined serve to illustrate the possibilities fundamental in workshops. Collaboration is the strategy identified in this study. Collaboration is recognised as a highly facilitated, team-oriented procedure. It builds on the negotiation, formation and advancement of socio-material structures and processes, fostering the convergence of individuals to address common challenges (Zamenopoulos & Alexiou, 2018). While the two facilitated sessions enabled a collaborative expression of co-design, the influence of collaboration can extend to other contexts and enactments of joint effort in design. Data documented by the previous group was visible to the new formation and served as a trigger for newly developed reflections, and the mix of participants during rotations aimed to capture the participatory nature of the output.

3.2 Analysis method

Data-driven content analysis (Krippendorff, 2013) was conducted by first reading the written workshop material two times and then starting to encode the content piece by piece to identify themes according to the content. Excel was used in encoding the reference units and tracking the stages of the analysis to ensure the rigour of the process. We defined a reference unit as a sentence, group of sentences or a part of a sentence addressing the same topic. Repeated readings afforded greater familiarisation with the data. By focusing on the similarities and differences in the expressed meanings, variations were identified and themed accordingly. The qualitative data was coded by the first author and offered for review by the second and third authors for probing the preliminary themes to ensure the quality of the analysis. This “probing” may prevent subjectivity bias and blind spots and help to avoid conclusions too early (Bowden & Green, 2010). The initial categories of description were further elaborated accordingly, fixed, and defined according to the most characteristic features of each category (Kettunen & Tynjälä, 2018). Finally, we identified a small set of qualitatively distinct descriptive categories. This aligns with the co-creative nature of design-based research, offering valuable insights into the creativity of the solutions generated by the participants.

3.3 Ethical considerations

The participants were informed about their right to withdraw from the research, and the privacy notice about the data processing was shared. Name, discipline, and email address were collected as part of the registration for the workshop, i.e., separately from the data collection situation in the workshops for anonymity of the data (Finnish National Board on Research Integrity, 2019). The manual material was transcribed, after which the flipcharts were destroyed. Identification information was removed from the data. All original digital files were stored on a secure server until analysis. Only transcribed, anonymous material has been used in the analysis of the data.

4 Results

UAS teachers’ understanding related to teaching in multidisciplinary DBE and the need for pedagogical support at the beginning of the learning journey for HAMK’s new pedagogical approach were investigated in two collaborative workshops during the fall of 2023. The themes that inform the new development of a DBE pedagogical approach at HAMK from the teachers’ perspective were divided into three sets: 1) UAS teachers’ expected changes in teaching and their needs for their DBE, 2) UAS teachers’ understanding of the design thinking process and its benefits and 3) UAS teachers’ understanding of why and how multidisciplinary projects will be implemented.

4.1 UAS teachers’ expected changes in teaching and needs for their DBE

The teachers expect many changes in their teaching (table 2). They see changes in the ways the whole implementation is organised and changes in their role as teachers. According to the teachers, the implementation will need to be organised differently than before. Teachers expect to have more work in coordinating the collaboration with the world of work, but they expect to share this work, as they will most likely work in teams. Teachers will be more like facilitating coaches who support the student-led co-creative learning process. In DBE, the teachers feel they will have to assess the course differently and use multiple assessment methods.

Table 2. UAS teachers’ expected changes in teaching and needs for their DBE.

Category	Sub-category
Expected changes in teaching	Teachers’ role changes to facilitator coach
	More coordination towards the world of work
	Teachers work in teams
	Implementation will need to be organised differently
	Multiple ways of assessment
	Focus on process
	More student-led learning
Teachers’ needs for their DBE	Teaching tools
	Training and mentors
	Work-related networks
	Assessment of know-how
	Attitude change
	Time
	Clear objectives
	New curriculum

According to the teachers, their role changes to that of facilitator–coach, as the learning while co-creating is more student-led (workshops 1 and 2):

Teaching is more intensive in the beginning but later it becomes more of coaching.

Teaching => coaching and facilitating.

The teacher is not a talking head.

Away from the ‘information pouring model’ towards team management (meta-skills management).

Multivocality – temperance not to speak.

However, some teachers are unsure of how to make this change possible (workshop 1):

How to transition from teaching to coaching?

The teachers expect to have more coordination and communication needs vis-à-vis world of work (workshops 1 and 2):

In the DBE type, the preparation time increases.

Coordination between companies, teachers and students.

Communication takes more time (companies).

Communication [is] all the more important [and] may include external stakeholders.

Communication with companies (manage expectations).

Finding companies?

Find regular partners.

They are also concerned about resources (workshop 2):

Six teachers attending meetings with companies.

Teachers see themselves working in teams (workshops 1 and 2):

Teaching teams: many roles.

Working in multidisciplinary teams.

I get support from my teaching colleagues.

The teachers have concerns related to the practical implementation of the course module. Implementation will need to be organised differently (workshops 1 and 2):

More face-to-face teaching?

Diversity stands out from the crowd.

How about a fast track or 24/7 in DBT model?

Flipping? E-teaching?

What about online?

The teaching of information acquisition is emphasised.

The teachers see a need for multiple ways of assessment, and they voiced a need for clear assessment criteria for the learning that stems from the DBE (workshops 1 and 2):

Define the evaluation criteria for the process.

Defining a new set of rules.

More focus on grouping, team agreements and reflection and team assessment => impact the assessment.

The teachers see that their role is more focused on supporting the process (workshops 1 and 2):

We use more design processes and innovation processes.

Focus on a process instead of a product.

More prototype testing and iterating.

The way of doing things has to be taught.

Here and now: creation and sensuality.

4.2 UAS teachers’ understanding of the design thinking process and its benefits

According to the teachers, DBE is an iterative design thinking process, which should include assessment phases. The teachers see the design process as a ‘helping hand’ for teachers. They see many benefits of DBE as a design process and can list them quite easily. However, they raise assessment as an important part of the process (table 3).

Table 3. UAS teachers’ understanding of the design thinking process and its benefits.

Category	Sub-category
Teachers’ understanding of the DBE process	Define
	Empathise
	Ideate
	Prototype
	Test
	Assessment
Benefits of the DBE process	Iteration
	Co-creation
	Rhythm
	Energy
	Responsibility
	Common rules

The steps of DBE were understood almost the same way as in design thinking. Steps such as define, empathise, ideate, prototype and test were mentioned, but assessment was raised as an important activity that was left undefined. There was no clear understanding of assessment. When and how should assessment take place? What should be assessed? There was no clear notion about whether assessment should focus on the team outcomes or process or at what points. However, the teachers saw assessment as an important part of the process. The process model was seen as an important tool for teachers who give opportunities for iteration and co-creation, rhythm and energy to the creative collaboration and responsibility and common rules to promote student engagement in the process and the multidisciplinary teamwork.

4.3 UAS teachers’ understanding of why and how multidisciplinary projects will be implemented

According to the teachers, multidisciplinary project work is needed because there is a real-world, explicitly work-related need for it. As such, it promotes complementary competencies and creative innovation potential. Students learn many kinds of social skills, broader perspectives, systems competences and process and project management (table 4).

Table 4. UAS teachers’ understanding of the reasons why multidisciplinarity will be implemented and how they think it can be done.

Category	Sub-category
Why multidisciplinary projects?	Real-world needs
	Work in a real-world working environment
	Complementary competencies
	Creative innovation potential
	Broader perspectives
	Better learning
	Social skills learning
	Systems competence
	Process and project management skills
How is multidisciplinarity implemented?	Real open challenges
	Iterative development model
	From small to big projects during studies
	Joint curriculum and schedule
	Teacher resources

The teachers mentioned that, for example, customers, patients, and sustainability transition require multidisciplinary solutions. This helps students to understand current and future working environments and develop their professional identities. Multidisciplinary teamwork offers real-world working environment in interesting projects based on real open challenges.

These types of requirements benefit from complementary competencies in a student team, as they need different types of competencies for the project to succeed. Wording such as ‘1+1 = 3 or more’, ‘need different knowledge for project to be a success’ and ‘shared expertise’ were used (Workshops 1 and 2). In addition, the complementarity of competencies among teachers were seen as a benefit. When teachers work as a multidisciplinary team or pair, they benefit from the diversity of teaching competencies. The teachers expressed that multidisciplinary teams have more innovation potential, as they offer more problem-solving capacity, creativity and broader perspectives. Students learn social skills, process and project management skills and different substance knowledge even systems competencies.

But how can multidisciplinary projects be organised according to the teachers? The teachers stated that projects need real open challenges from the world of work, an iterative working model such as the design thinking process model, joint curriculum and teacher resources. There was a mention of and a figure showing an implementation proposal. Some teachers drew a cumulative model together (workshops 1 and 2):

1st year ‘Diili’ 1 week, 2nd year ‘PDP’ 8 weeks, 3rd year multidisciplinary (international) project 8–15 weeks, 4th year opportunity for joint larger projects.

According to the figure, projects like one-week-long ‘shark tank type project (‘Diili’) could be implemented during the first study year. During the second study year an 8-week-long product development project (‘PDP’) could be implemented. During the third study year, an 8–15-weeklong multidisciplinary, even international project could be implemented. The last study year could offer larger projects to choose from. According to teachers, the implementations model of DBE projects could be planned to curricula from small to big in year 1 to year 4.

5 Discussion and conclusions

The aim of this paper was to unfold teachers’ understanding of multidisciplinary DBE and their needs at the beginning of the transition to DBE. We used collaborative workshops to determine the teachers’ understanding and needs. In total, 61 teachers participated in two workshops that were held as part of DBE teachers’ briefs. The results clearly show the position the teachers are in at the beginning of the transition and before the teacher training and coaching for the implementation are systematically offered to them. Teachers’ understanding of multidisciplinary DBE and their needs at the beginning of the transition to DBE relate to 1) UAS teachers’ expected changes in teaching and needs for their DBE, 2) UAS teachers’ understanding of the design thinking process and its benefits and 3) UAS teachers’ understanding of why and how multidisciplinary projects will be implemented.

According to the knowledge gathered in the workshops: 1) Teachers expect many changes in their teaching. They see changes in the ways the whole implementation is organised and changes in their role as teachers. According to the teachers, the implementation will need to be organised differently than before. The teachers expect to have more work in coordinating the collaboration with the world of work, but they expect to share this work, as they will most likely work in teams. Teachers will be more like facilitating coaches who support the student-led co-creative learning process. In DBE, the teachers feel they will have to assess the course differently and use multiple assessment methods. 2) According to the teachers, DBE is an iterative design thinking process that should include assessment phases. They see the design process as a ‘helping hand’ for teachers. They note many benefits of DBE as a design process and can list them quite easily. However, they raise assessment as an important part of the process. 3) According to the teachers, multidisciplinary project work is needed because there is a real-world, explicitly work-related need for it. As such, it promotes complementary competencies and creative innovation potential. Students learn many kinds of social skills, broader perspectives, systems competences and process and project management.

In the workshops, the teachers recognised the aim of DBE as being to promote the trialogue between students, teachers and professional fields (e.g., Geitz & Geus, 2019). These three form the co-creative learning subject of the DBE activity system (Engeström, 1987; Hero, 2019; Hero & Lindfors, 2019). The teachers seem to conceptualise DBE as co-creative and ecosystem-centric learning, where the degree of social interaction is high (Scharmer, 2019). According to the workshop material, there is some understanding of the profound need to have an authentic open challenge from the world of work. Splitting up complex phenomena into isolated disciplines and subjects makes it hard for the students to recognise and understand the links between facts and phenomena and the connection between teaching and real-life contexts (Scheer et al., 2021).

The role of teachers in authentic, open, challenge-based UAS–industry project pedagogy is seen as being significantly different from the traditional work of teachers and is aligned with the principles of authentic learning environments (Herrington et al., 2010). According to the workshop material, the role of teachers is that of facilitators rather than instructors (Scheer et al., 2012; Kunnari et al., 2021). Not all teachers’ tasks in co-creative and ecosystem-centric learning, such as DBE, are recognised (Kunnari et al., 2021). Teachers recognise the collaborative tasks in facilitation, and they recognise their need to work together in open physical and digital environments (Kunnari et al., 2021). However, they express concern about how online learning can be facilitated by teachers. They do not express the need to make a pedagogical manuscript, but they clearly see the need to co-create the process within teacher teams (Kunnari et al., 2021). The real need for continuous guidance and support, such as listening, observing, asking questions and being present, is not mentioned. However, the teachers see a clear need for continuous assessment (Kunnari et al., 2021). They feel they need more know-how regarding assessment opportunities and methods. Teachers do not mention the need for teachers to focus holistically on students’ competencies, self-efficacy, and creativity (Kunnari et al., 2021), but they postulate that multidisciplinary teams have more innovation potential because they offer more problem-solving capacity, creativity and broader perspectives. According to the teachers, in addition to creativity, students learn social skills, process and project management skills and different substance knowledge, even systems competencies.

The workshop method to gather information was optimal, as it allowed for discussion and co-creation. Yet, it still allowed the more silent teachers to just write down on paper what they felt was important to express. However, as a downside, this method has most likely left out some opinions and knowledge. It expresses only the groups’ opinions and consensus. Nevertheless, this result describes the current thinking of teachers and provides important information for the planners of teacher training.

To conclude, teachers recognise their changing tasks in DBE teaching and learning and see the need for real co-creation and multidisciplinary teamwork among students to solve open-ended problems. However, they have a clear need for a new curriculum and clear objectives from the management, training and support in implementation planning and co-design, work-related networks, pedagogical tools for facilitating the process and practical assessment methods. They need traditional training and collaborative learning and sparring to support co-teaching; to share best practices, such as tools, assessment methods and implementation design; and to improve their self-esteem as DBE teachers. However, the most important is unformal, collaborative learning in practice. In DBE, teachers learn by doing and by just jumping into the job. In DBE, teachers do not necessarily have the right answers, and they face the open challenge like students do. This can be openly shared with students. Pair tutoring, master–novice cooperation and the iterative design thinking process model support the job.