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Navigating societal, technological, and environmental changes, the urgent need for transformational change within organizations and society has become a paramount concern. The sustainable development goals (SDGs) necessities innovative approaches that can address complexities and multiple-actor involvement to enable systemic shifts. This paper highlights the urgency of quality education SDG #4 as a trigger point for educational change action. This paper seeks to explore how design thinking can be systematically linked with transformational change and theoretically contribute as process enabler as part of an educational ecosystem. Through actuators, change agents, change processes and reasons for addressing this from a systems perspective is conceptualized in an educational ecosystem. By delving into co-evolutionary dynamics of organizational complexities, this paper looks for ways to establish more resilient strategies for change that also in for future work can further inspire to align efforts with the SDGs.  

Purpose – Despite increasing focus among scholars and practitioners on the design of product-services systems (PSS), there exists no compilation of current knowledge on the role played by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in designing such systems. Thus, this paper sets out to identify and organise the existing research and suggest questions for future research.

Design/methodology/approach—A systematic literature review was performed to identify and provide in-depth details on key themes in the literature addressing the design of PSS in SMEs.

Findings – This paper identifies five themes in the literature on the design of PSS in SMEs: motives, challenges, SME characteristics, methods and digitalisation. The themes are interrelated, and SME characteristics seem to beat the core as they are related to all the other themes. Gaps in the current knowledge are identified, and questions for future research are suggested.

Originality/value – The suggestions for future research provide a starting point for expanding the research on PSS design and devising practical support for SMEs.

Universities face a critical crossroads, in need of swift, targeted, and efficient actions toaddress future challenges. This necessities a strategic approach to updating and assessingengineering design education. Efforts to improve teaching and learning require systematicchange in many universities, yet research on structuring such change is scarce. Few studieshave combined a systems perspective with a functional operational level. This researchembeds design thinking to structure to isolated actions. Drawing from an extensive literaturereview of educational change frameworks and several illustrative cases, this article demon-strates the potential of design-driven change. It highlights how dynamic interrelations canfacilitate educational transformations across diverse academic levels. By presenting aneducational ecosystem as a framework for systematic educational change, design thinkingfunctions as a catalyst for educational transformation. The article also presents case findingsthat strengthen supportive actions ingrained in existing change research frameworks con-necting, them to a transparent approach for sustainable and careful decision-making.

With the rapid development and increasing utilisation of eXtended Reality (XR), sustainability considerations have become an important factor in the design process. Despite the many advantages of XR, existing studies covering design education research show a fragmented early phase application use primarily focusing on local use-cases rather than global interconnected alternatives. While many universities are developing their digital capabilities using XR for various educational purposes, fewexamples exist of interceded activities using multiple variations of XR (i.e., VR, AR, or MR).Establishing a more interconnected set of use-cases is important to fully realise the potential of this technology. Past methodological considerations have been presented through guided design steps when working with elements of XR. However, to position early attempts to work on design imperatives using XR this paper presents a literature review and content analysis to examine the current state of design principles for XR. By utilizing the Design Society's knowledge repository, it employs a categorization process and charts valuable insights of existing XR pedagogical practices. Ultimately, this paper highlights the importance of considering sustainability in digitally enabled prototyping steps and practices using XR and its relevance for the E&PDE community. It also emphasises the need for more research and attention on how XR is practised and how it can be used to advance sustainability efforts.

The advent of augmented reality (AR) is reshaping the way people experience physical and virtual environments, from observation to immersion. Growing interest in adopting AR provides opportunities for immersive learning, upskilling, and renewal. However, uncertainties exist in how to maneuver a transition toward making use of this technology through systematic integration. Due to the turmoil caused by the global pandemic health crisis, implementation of AR now faces urgency in minimizing adoption thresholds and establishing a more systematic escalation approach. This paper investigates the characteristics of such learning approaches and examines the integration of AR with customized progression. Two solution suppliers were investigated to uncover the integration process of AR, which, to the best of our knowledge, is scarcely explored in existing research. This study reveals that a balanced escalation of user-centric learning activities, i.e., an onboarding process, harmonizes anticipated cognition levels for a designated AR application tool.

Augmented Reality (AR) has developed rapidly inrecent years and it is about to become a mainstream technology.We are witnessing how emerging technologies such as AR has been introduced and today widely applied in engineering education.The turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has in many ways highlighted the importance of AR technology for collaboration and remote assistance of frontline workers. Enabling experts to be much more productive in helping to debug problems and resolve production issues remotely. This kind of hands-on support and tutoring opportunities play well into the possibilities embedded in a more digitalized approach to engineering education. Still, both industries and universities are exploring ways to enhance the value-added credentials that come along with an integration and investment of AR. This paper set out to understand what type of assessment that are used to drive learning performance amongstudents in engineering education.

Never before has restrictions at a global scale due to the Covid-19 pandemic put industry at such unprecedented transformation need. Sustainability by using resources with greater consideration in order to continue to stay resilient, and to thrive post-pandemic has put attention on how benefit the most out of emerging technologies. The advent of extended reality (XR) is today reshaping the way people experience the physical and the virtual environments, from observation to immersion. Due to the turmoil caused by the pandemic technologies that minimize equipment threshold has increased in popularity. Today XR enable experts to be more productive to detect and debug problems and resolve production issues remotely. Currently, both clear advantages and potential disadvantages may exist based on degree of the maturity level of integration. XR provides opportunities for immersive learning, upskilling and renewal. Still, it involves several uncertainties in benefits. XR implementation therefore remain very dispersed among companies. Implementation of these technologies has been considered more to the level of having an inhouse highly sophisticated playground, with potential for later consideration. However, what is missing in many instances is a clear understanding of the impact and transformative mechanisms that AR, VR and MR could provide if only equipped with learnings of how to introduce and adopt knowledge embedded in various use-cases. With a growing experience in testing these technologies the possibilities and requirements needed for successful decision-making are also starting to emerge. Consequently, by understand learning adoption and value drivers in industrial settings, skills practiced in academia can be sharpened not only from a contextual understanding but also to new academic domains and to incentivize implementation initiatives. This paper is looking at distinct value indicators for onboarding as a way for industry professionals to learn new XR skills. 

This conceptual paper presents a Living Lab model of how university, society and organisation may strengthen the co-creation capacity on regional and international level to improve quality in higher education. Our conclusions are that successful co-creation between universities and society/organizations is built on mutual contribution, knowledge sharing as well as engagement from all involved. Here, living lab methods can help improve quality. Further, from a university perspective, a challenge is to keep the engagement in the project from all involved, and to assure an equal status between stakeholders. This calls for a skill in how to conduct project in co-creation with several partners. A skill that has to be taught to students as well as to teachers and researchers.