Spreading digital innovation culture among students: a multi-stage laboratory model on AI and Anticipatory Thinking for schools

This article presents a laboratory pathway called DigInnoLab, which is aimed at seeding digital innovation culture among students, with a particular focus on AI. The idea is to help learners not only to become conscious users of digital innovation products but also active participants in digital innovation ecosystems, e.g., by becoming future developers. Through the proposed pathway, students will learn about key characteristics of digital and sustainable innovation, basic AI concepts and major applications. Critically, they will also develop anticipatory thinking skills for imagining possible futures and how to generate them. The DigInnoLab pathway comprises three interconnected stages: Lab#1 focuses on key features of innovation processes and basic AI concepts; Lab#2 is devoted to understanding and applying anticipatory thinking in order to foresee and evaluate multiple futures for sustainable AI development; and Lab#3 entails a hackathon event to engage students in developing innovation ideas on DigInnoLab topics. To ensure its sustainability and up scalability, the DigInnoLab pathway is designed so that teachers can manage it autonomously. To this end, an online training course has been developed that helps teachers familiarize with the contents and strategies for handling the lab pathway with their students.