The Infinite Learning Chain. Flipped Professional Labs for Learning and Knowledge Co-Creation

Nowadays universities and other classicalresearch institutions are changing their role in knowledge creation. In general terms we can characterize thistransition as the path from “Closed Science” to“OpenScience” as a part of a deeper and structural phenomenonknown as “knowledge democratization”, where differentstakeholders as students, makers and other tech andscience enthusiasts are able to create knowledge learningfrom the researchers and cooperating with them.In this process, science engagement of these newactors is a key point to stimulate their creativity, getsome important research skills learnt directly from theresearchers and be able to apply these skills teachingothers in a continuous “learning chain”.In this article, we introduce some main features andpreliminary results of an experiment called “The infinitelearning chain” done in cooperation with Arduino,focused on sensing science and based in a real researchproject of Group of Atmospheric Science (GAS) calledLuleå Environmental Monitoring Stations (LEMS). We debate some interesting questions related to the impact of the format in terms of science engagement, STEMskills acquisition and cooperative learning involvement.We used as “learning ecosystem” a professional Lab, theINSPIRE Lab a complete multidisciplinary facility forspace and environmental research and exploration.