Educational, social and technical experimentation in university media labs

Abstract

This study explores the activities, projects and lines of action of twenty-four media labs of Higher Education Institutions, chosen from a non-probabilistic system. A qualitative content analysis is applied on it to map the characteristics of the laboratories. Following an inductive process of categorization, the study identifies as outstanding work axes initiatives that materialize the principles of collective intelligence, encourage the transformation of teaching and learning systems, and promote the use of multimedia and audiovisual languages ​​inside and outside the classroom. The results underline the teaching patterns that strengthen the links of Institutions with their social environments. The projects and initiatives found show how media labs facilitate new ways of reaching knowledge in areas as varied as art, design, journalism or engineering through the use of technologies.