Since the term ‘Living Labs’ has become shorthand for a method of seeking solutions to various real-life issues and problems by locals and stakeholders themselves through innovation, its popularity and influence have been growing across different sectors and countries. The Institute for Poverty Alleviation and International Development (IPAID), Yonsei University, South Korea (hereafter ‘Korea’) started in 2022 a living lab-based cross-national/regional research project in the context of higher education.

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IPAID’s research project on living labs is unique in that it brings living labs to the classroom as an innovative pedagogic practice: students are involved in living lab projects as part of their learning subjects at university. While living lab-based courses and teaching have been extended in recent years in Korea and beyond as part of broad initiatives to introduce innovative pedagogy, IPAID’s project particularly aims to develop an educational model that is problem-solving oriented, especially by finding locally tailored solutions to global issues, namely a de-centralized global educational model, and to disseminate it for international cooperation in higher education.

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The IPAID research project involves running living lab-based classes at the home/host university in parallel with partner universities and sharing the student-produced outcomes and learning/teaching experiences. While living labs were first incorporated into the curriculum of International Relations at Yonsei University Mirae Campus in 2019, from the Spring semester, four universities in four countries (Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and the USA) started to run living lab-based classes with more than 100 students enrolled. In the Autumn semester of 2023, three universities in three countries (South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines) ran five living lab-based classes in which a total of 120 students took part, and in the Spring semester of 2024, five universities in five countries (South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Rwanda) run 14 classes, which more than 400 students signed up for. The number of participating universities is expected to rise and living lab-based courses are to be further extended to universities in North America and Europe.

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Having run living lab-based courses in the three semesters, initial research outcomes are emerging. A group of researchers involved in the project have developed sub-research themes on the basis of pre- and post-surveys as well as semi-structured interviews with the students who have attended the living lab-based courses, such as the pedagogic impacts of living lab-based classes and the potentials of living lab-based classes in reforming ODA policies to empower local students. In addition, two international conferences on living labs were held in 2023 and 2024 as a venue for the educators that had been involved in living lab-based teaching to share their experiences and thoughts. Based on the accumulated data sets of survey results and interviews as well as the extended network of partner countries through living labs, a wide range of new international cooperation programmes are now being explored and developed.