Responsibility in University Ecosystems and Challenge Based Learning

Universities introduce real-life stakeholders in their courses as challenge based learning (CBL). We argue that the literature has not yet discussed the role of responsibility for universities, their students and their ecosystems in this new format. This paper explores this gap by using Niklas Luhmann’s concepts of structural differentiation, structural coupling and irritation. It studies how the focus of CBL on responsibility influences the structural couplings of the subsystems education, research and economy in society. We expect that responsibility in students and universities could be promoted by creating structural couplings between these subsystems. The paper shows why practice-based education may be undersupplied at universities and how novel education formats can be understood to fill this gap.