The risks and uncertainties of the “future-as-unknown” (Barnett, 2012) invite us to revise our objectives as well as our structures and practices in higher education. Sustainable development is one of the central topics in this context and research and teaching are encouraged to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2005). To address this demand, potentialities of digitisation for Education for Sustainable Development should be investigated.

The symposium explores the use of innovative technology in a student crowd environment. It thereby contributes to the field of digital teaching and learning by providing design principles and discussing the challenges and opportunities related to these principles.

Exemplarily, ideas are taken up from the joint project "Video-based Learning through Research on Sustainability: Student Crowd Research (SCoRe)", which goes beyond the traditional teaching and learning methods in multiple ways. Firstly, it aims for a digital space where teaching and learning are organised. The project’s educational concept is research-based learning (RBL), a way of learning oriented towards professional research. But the students’ learning activities are not only guided by research questions and methods. Students are also expected to use video and innovative video technology such as 360° video within their research projects in multiple ways. Moreover, many students are supposed to be involved: Crowd research is intended to emerge out of the single contributions of the many on the digital platform. The contentual focus, finally, is sustainability, which brings along aspects of inter- and transdisciplinarity and a direct relation to societal key problems. The project builds upon experience of the Virtual Academy of Sustainability, a platform which offers video-based courses on sustainable development to students in Germany.

The research and learning space is still in the process of being conceptualised, constructed and evaluated, yet already an object of research itself. This is made possible by the methodological framework: Design-Based Research (DBR) (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003; Van den Akker et al.; 2006; McKenney & Reeves, 2018; Bakker, 2018) represents the principle of “research by design” in the field of education. The design process is guided by research findings, testing and adjusting while research benefits from comprehensive data and immediate impact. Accordingly, the results are, on the one hand, design recommendations and, on the other hand, theoretical conjectures.

The design ideas and DBR as a methodological framework are both associated with great opportunities, but also with challenges. The symposium seeks to address selected aspects out of this context in four papers. The central questions are: How is research-based learning possible in the specific context outlined above? What are the conceptual implications of the different design elements? Which risks should be paid attention to? Views from three countries provide a multifaceted discussion on the different focus areas. The symposium brings together explorations of the project's specificities with a critical view on this kind of RBL and methodological thoughts on DBR in a larger-scale project: The first paper provides a critical introduction by drawing attention to characteristics of research-based learning and some of the main challenges video-based student crowd research has to meet. The following two contributions present first design principles for a digital learning and research space. While Paper 2 offers new ideas of research-based learning by applying the 360° video technology, Paper 3 figures out how crowd-based collaboration can promote sustainable development. Finally, Paper 4 highlights the challenges and opportunities associated with DBR as a methodological framework.

Bakker, A. (2018). Design Research in Education. London: Routledge. Barnett, R. (2012). Learning for an unknown future. Higher Education Research & Development, 31(1), 65–77. Design-Based Research Collective (2003). Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5–8. McKenney, S., & Reeves, T. C. (2018). Conducting Educational Design Research (Second edition). London: Routledge. Van den Akker, J., Gravemeijer, K., McKenney, S., & Nieveen, N. (Eds.) (2006). Educational Design Research. London; New York: Routledge. United Nations (2005). Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (A/RES/70/1). Retrieved from https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld, accessed 24 January 2019.