Innovation @Learning Planet Institute

Developing hands-on approaches to education in the life, learning and digital sciences

The labs of the Learning Planet Institute’s innovation hub have been designing, prototyping and producing tools for research projects and innovative pedagogy while also functioning as advisors in these areas. In short, they promote learning that combines design and technology.

GameLab Designs innovative games for science and education

HealthLab Brings interdisciplinarity into healthcare

MakerLab Develops open tools for research, education and learning projects

VR Frontiers Lab Explores Virtual Reality applications in education and interdisciplinary science

WetLab Synthetic biology experimental lab

Winter and summer schools

In an effort to work towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the SDG School is a 4-week programme that helps students develop the individual and collective skills necessary to tackle the major challenges of our time. The programme results from the fusion of two complementary programmes, the S.T.E.A.M. School by Maker’s Asylum and our own Learning Planet Institute Labs Summer School, and is jointly run by the two organisations.

The SDG School focuses on efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. The Goals are a blueprint for building a better, more sustainable future for the entire planet, specifically in the areas of education, healthcare, equality, energy, production, consumption, climate change and strategic partnerships.

During this intensive 4-week programme, students gain familiarity with real-world development issues around the globe as well as with the new scientific methodologies and technologies that can solve them. Students are trained to think like social entrepreneurs and design impactful, meaningful projects. They can make games or devices or even create an art installation dealing with one of the SDGs. Experts are there to support and mentor students in game making, medicine, environmental science, digital fabrication, frugal innovation and much more!

50+ R&D interns trained in the last two years
30+ R&D institutional partners (Harvard, MIT, Tsinghua, Geneva, IRCAM...)

The open digital campus

Learning Planet Institute is taking the initiative of building a digital campus for #LearningPlanet. We want to offer users customized recommendations for learning resources based on their unique profiles as well as make it possible for them to share their learning projects with others and connect with our broader community of learners and mentors. Not only that, we’ll also reward users for their work! Our building on Rue Charles V in Paris is becoming a fully vested digital space, a pioneer digital open campus to hopefully inspire other like-minded learning spaces around the world.

Collaborative, connected digital platforms

To help your and others’ learning communities get off the ground, Learning Planet Institute is building a collaborative digital ecosystem with three connected platforms:

On the Projects platform, researchers and students can upload files and share collaborative projects while taking advantage of features for connecting with other learners and mentors. Currently, 1,700 projects are already online!
Our knowledge GPS WeLearn lets learners search, cross-reference, and pool crucial learning resources as well as meet other users who share their same interests by harnessing the collaborative and artificial intelligence we’ve provided.
With Skills, learners build a complete profile of their academic and personal strengths in order to better understand themselves and forge their own learning path.

State-of-the-art digital infrastructure

Learning Planet Institute is deploying state-of-the-art digital infrastructure, made available to researchers, staff, and students, not to mention the broader Learning Planet Institute community at large:

a fiber-optic network, Wifi, and ultra high speed broadband, durable for the next 20 years with top security features, suited for processing enormous volumes of data necessary for research both now and in the future: genomics, 3D imaging, cartography, etc.
multimedia infrastructure integrated into the building’s information system, complete with touch-screen terminals for information sharing and booking meeting rooms, all classrooms and meeting rooms equipped with touch-screen AV-integration modules—the list goes on. Everything is documented, open source, and open hardware such that any group wanting to harness these tools can take command and use them as they see fit.

The RTR project

RTR website

Reconnecting NEETs with the job market

As part of its Skills Investment Plan, the French Ministry of Labour has made a call for projects that promote educational and professional integration. The goal of the plan is to identify and test out new ideas that can accelerate the inclusion of society’s most vulnerable, helping them earn qualifications or further their professional development so they can reconnect with the job market.

The RTR project - Make your dreams come true - was selected by the French Ministry of Labour and will be piloted at three sites in France: Lille-Roubaix, Paris-Montreuil and Marseille. It’s an action-research project that experiments with new approaches to education and training that support NEETs in their effort to enhance their skills and find employment.

Behind the project is a consortium of partners: the Catholic Institute of Lille (ICL), the Collective and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (LICA), the Chance social business, the Synergie Family and the Learning Planet Institute.

With the RTR project, we want to offer a new vision of how the labour market should work, namely that it should be the market that seeks out individuals while individuals should be empowered to choose employment based on their identity, talents, resources, motivations and dreams. The project aims to connect the labour market with NEETs in such a way that both sides can enjoy a sustainable and fulfilling partnership.

3 territories : Lille-Roubaix, Paris-Montreuil, Aix-Marseille
1500 people reached
target audience : women and 18-30 year old people
70 people in the project team

Research challenge institute "L'Institut des défis"

Research challenge institute "Institut des défis"

The Research Challenge Institute is the transformation incubator of the Université Paris Cité, co-created by the Learning Planet Institute and the Université Paris Cité.

We design action programmes to support all members of the university engaged in its ecological transition through :

A collaborative digital ecosystem that maps resources, skills, projects, people.
Pedagogical innovation oriented towards interdisciplinarity and project-based pedagogy.
Research and participatory science to promote an informed dialogue between the parties.
International positioning the Université Paris Cité as a model of a learning university.

Find out more

Some innovative projects