How can professors and lecturers at Hochschule München (HM) make their teaching more practical? As part of the Co-Innovation Lab (CIL), the project team has transformed the complexity of sensor data collected in the buildings of HM into an intuitive, user-friendly dashboard. By providing quick and effortless access, the team has changed the way lecturers and students interact with real-time data.
Addressing the challenge involves eliminating time-consuming obstacles and bottlenecks faced by HM lecturers and students when retrieving HM’s sensor data. The opportunity lies in enabling educators to autonomously establish an optimal learning environment and allowing students to apply theoretical knowledge in practical settings, facilitated by the newly introduced HM InsightHub.
As a university of applied sciences, HM offers practice-based programs for global careers. HM InsightHub enables lecturers to easily access and retrieve authentic real-time data for their students to practically learn data science through real projects working with sensor data. Based on the existing infrastructure of sensors, networks and gateways, the team streamlined the various sources into one central dashboard that allows the user to customize and download a dataset based on their needs. In collaboration with the client Prof. Dr. Johannes Ebke of the faculty for Computer Science and potential end users, the team identified the most pressing need. As said by Prof. Dr. Ebke: “By picking this use case, the team has enhanced the software product that I had in mind and made it more useful for everyone.”
During the development phase, the project team ensured that the solution is scalable. In future, the dashboard will be able to be equipped with additional data sources and expanded as required. Furthermore, the data will not only be made available to Munich University of Applied Sciences, but also to other universities to encourage research. Additionally, the team also provided Prof. Dr. Ebke with a mobile webpage that enables him to track sensor health and improves the day-to-day maintenance of the sensors installed at HM.
The cross-cultural team is composed of a group of Master’s students from the Digital Technology Management program at HM as well as Finnish Computer Science students from Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK). The cooperation was not without challenges, because everyone needed some time to warm towards each other, but near the end the team came together as one and leveraged the capabilities of modern technology to enable close communication across the two programs. The team was supported by the course instructors Prof. Dr. Holger Günzel, Prof. Dr. Lars Brehm and Prof. Dr. Slamka, as well as Hans-Jürgen Haak, coach for agile working, as well as Jere Käpyaho and Annemari Stensbacka to ensure the project was a complete success.
About the Digital Innovation Lab and the Co-Innovation Lab
This solution was designed in a joint project between the Digital Transformation Lab and the Co-Innovation Lab of Hochschule München guided by the lecturers Prof. Dr. Holger Günzel, Prof. Dr. Lars Brehm, Prof. Dr. Jessica Slamka, Hans-Jürgen Haak, Jere Käpyhao and Anne Mari Stenbacka (TAMK). The Co-Innovation Lab offers students a virtual platform for learning how to work as a consulting team by creating temporary partnerships between companies, students, and lecturers.
For more information about the Co-Innovation Lab, contact holger.guenzel@hm.edu or lars.brehm@hm.edu.
This Co-Innovation Lab project was carried out in cooperation with the Digital Transformation Lab (DT.Lab) at Munich University of Applied Sciences:
“The Digital Transformation Lab (DT.Lab) at Munich University of Applied Sciences is dedicated to the major social challenges of our time. Together with stakeholders in the private sector, students develop future-oriented solutions. We live digital transformation.”
More information about the Co-Innovation Lab and the Digital Transformation Lab (DT.Lab) at Munich University of Applied Sciences:
- Website Co-Innovation Lab: https://www.co-inno-lab.org/
- Website DT.Lab: https://hm.edu/dt-lab/ & Challenge auf der DTLab-Website
Authors: Project team