Workshop on “Interactive Displays: Use, Benefits, Environmental and Social Impacts”

This innovative practice full paper describes, a workshop that arose from the growing environmental awareness of our students and the observation that the responses proposed by engineering schools were still limited. The integration of environmental and societal impacts of technology into our courses is not sufficiently addressed. The aim of the workshop was to develop students' critical thinking skills, raise their awareness of the environmental and societal impacts of digital technology, introduce them to industry and give them the opportunity to work in multidisciplinary, culturally diverse teams. The workshop “Interactive Screens: usage, usefulness, environmental and social impacts” was held on February 6 and 7 and brought together 74 students from various engineering schools and one business school. Ten experts were in charge of helping the students to prepare the work according to industrial concerns; these experts came from industry (researchers for private companies, managers) and from the academic world (professors, public researchers). The experts helped the organizing team to gather scientific resources and one of them presented his work on the rebound effect. The workshops themselves lasted two days and were conducted entirely in English. The students were divided into 13 groups of 6 and worked in different application areas (education, business, entertainment).