A Case Study on Collective Learning and Intermediary Activities in Living Lab

Abstract

Objectives A group of various stakeholders itself cannot automatically guarantee learning for co-creation. For the creation of collective knowledge, intermediary activities that can interconnect and integrate several subjects with different interests, backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge are essential. Living Lab is a place of collective learning based on the horizontal cooperative relationship between private, public, industry, and academia, and is a representative form of co-creation. However, in the case of Living Lab in Korea, research from the perspective of collective learning through co-creation has hardly been conducted. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the collective learning of Living Lab and derive implications, focusing on intermediary activities. Methods A qualitative case study was conducted on the ‘Smart Farm Planning Living Lab for Revitalizing the Old Urban Community’ held in Innovation District, Incheon. In order to structure interactions for collective learning, ac-tivities and tasks for each stage of the Living Lab were organized around the process and results of collective learn-ing, and then classified and analyzed as detailed intermediary activities of facilitating, configuring, brokering ac-cording to the definition of Hakkarainen & Hyysalo(2016). Results In all three stages of Living Lab, the proportion of facilitating was the highest, and brokering were common. This can be interpreted as a result showing that intermediary activities that facilitate actors' activities and broker connections between actors are essential in the process of co-creation to solve social problems. Next, through the three stages of Living Lab, all detailed intermediary activities of the facilitating, configuring, brokering appeared, and it was confirmed that the proportion of detailed intermediary activities was different for each stage of progress. This shows that it is necessary to pay attention to the importance and multifacetedness of interme-diary activities that are overlooked in co-creation through Living Lab. Conclusions This study supports the results of previous studies that the intermediary activities that contribute to collecitve learning and co-creation of Living Lab need to be extended and understood into three types: configuring and brokering as well as facilitating. In addition, the diversity of intermediary activities has important implications for the practical guidelines for Living Lab operation, which are characterized by a spiral development structure that changes according to the results of interaction and learning. Finally, the recognition of the intermediary's unique interactional expertise and the need for research on practical curriculum development and field operation guide-lines based on it were proposed.