Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract/Objectives

The concept of Living Lab, introduced by MIT's Professor William Mitchell, combines experimental research with real-life user contexts to enhance complex solutions. The "Campus as a Living Lab" extends this idea to university settings, allowing faculty, staff, and students at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) to collaborate on sustainability projects. Scheduled for 2025, the fourth iteration focuses on campus challenges, with students proposing solutions in a cooperative model. Activities will include proposal calls, design thinking workshops, and exhibitions to share results. Challenges for this edition involve reducing campus waste and maintaining biodiversity. Eight student teams participated, with the event co-organized by the university’s sustainability center and the HULT Prize Society. Awards were given to exceptional projects in both the Accelerator and Incubator groups, recognizing innovative solutions to sustainability issues on campus.

Results/Contributions （500 words）

The concept of Living Lab was first proposed by Professor William Mitchell of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He believed that a Living Lab is a research method that brings the experimental laboratory environment into the real-life context of users, allowing for the perception, prototyping, validation, and improvement of various complex solutions in diverse and evolving real-world environments.


The extension of Living Lab into the concept of Campus as a Living Lab means treating the "campus as a living laboratory." In this context, those participating in and implementing experiments are also members of campus life. Everyone can contribute ideas, provide feedback, and share results.


The "NTHU Campus as a Living Lab" (NTHU CLL), organized by National Tsing Hua University, primarily involves three major stakeholders on campus: faculty, staff, and students. The aim is to achieve the ultimate goal of "campus sustainability" through mutual cooperation among stakeholders, sharing expertise, developing experimental plans, and putting them into practice.


The fourth NTHU Campus as a Living Lab will be held in 2025, focusing on a model where the campus proposes challenges and students devise solutions. Through collaboration among the three stakeholders, the project will include calls for proposals, two project presentation and evaluation sessions, two exhibitions (mid-term poster exhibition and Tsing Hua Sustainable Group Exhibition), and two workshops (design thinking workshops) to enhance students’ sustainable execution capabilities and connect the proposing units with students.


The main activities of this project include: calls for proposals, design thinking workshops, and results sharing.

Calls for proposals: Tsing Hua students will present their research findings and suggestions regarding sustainability-related issues encountered by the campus. Students can also propose their own ideas to find solutions for campus sustainability issues they have observed.

Design thinking workshops: Using the design thinking approach, participating students will identify core problems and propose more robust and effective solutions through design methods.

Results sharing: Through exhibitions in November and results sharing in April, students' practical achievements will have the opportunity to be seen by all faculty and students, promoting collaboration among partners and providing feedback and participation opportunities for stakeholders within the campus.


The challenges for this edition are as follows:

Office of General Affairs/Safety and Health Center:

Reducing campus waste


Tsing Hua College:

Maintaining campus biodiversity


A total of 8 student teams participated in this edition. The event was co-organized by the National Tsing Hua University Center for Sustainable and Resilient Development and the student organization "HULT Prize Society." The results sharing and evaluation meeting were judged by various departments, and winners were selected from both the "Accelerator Group" and the "Incubator Group," which are as follows:


Accelerator Group:

Fix and Chat (Outstanding)


Incubator Group:

T-bike Research and Development Must-Peek (Outstanding)

肥水不落外人田 (Honorable Mention)

烏嘎嘎烏拉拉 (Honorable Mention)

水木新生 (Honorable Mention)

Keywords

NTHU Campus as a Living Lab