Project Type: Funded Living Lab (Public Sector)
Institution: HTW Berlin
Funding: Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre
Duration: 2023–2025
Focus: Flexible & Active Learning Environments (FLE / ALE / TEAL / Scale-Up)
Scale: 4 model learning spaces · 20+ professors · 200–300 students
Role: Research Assistant · Implementation & Knowledge Infrastructure
Outputs: Publication · Digital Handbook · Dissemination Videos
Multi-year living lab implementing and institutionalizing Flexible Learning Environments (FLE) and Active Learning Environments (ALE/TEAL/Scale-Up) across two faculties at HTW Berlin. The project developed, implemented, and evaluated four model learning spaces as catalysts for institutional transformation in higher education.
Introducing empirically validated learning space models into established university structures generates both opportunity and friction. Spatial innovation intersects with entrenched teaching routines, administrative processes, technical constraints, and varying levels of openness among faculty.
The transformation challenge was therefore not architectural alone. It required sustained alignment between pedagogical practice, institutional culture, and structural conditions within a complex public-sector organization.
The living lab integrated:
The model rooms were positioned not as isolated pilots, but as institutional leverage points embedded within broader organizational processes.
As research assistant under the leadership of Prof. Katja Ninnemann, Prof. Jona Piehl, and Prof. Pelin Celik, I contributed to the implementation and stabilization of the transformation process. My role included:
The Digital Handbook functioned both as a public-facing documentation platform and as an internal implementation and troubleshooting guide for faculty and students, supporting sustainable institutional integration.
Qualitative evaluation showed that several professors intentionally selected these spaces to enable fundamentally different didactic approaches.
This project demonstrates how learning environments can serve as institutional leverage points when accompanied by structured support, evaluation, and knowledge infrastructure.
It represents applied institutional transformation within the public sector and forms a central pillar of my ongoing work at the intersection of systemic design and higher education innovation.