The „Rock your thoughts!” educational film was made for the 13-18 year old generation in 2010 to teach innovation and strengthen related attitudes. The film had a novel hybrid documentary format: educational contents were embedded into dramatic narratives. The filmmaking experience is now shown in a new product and new knowledge development perspective, whereby different professional domains – teachers, social science and engineering researchers, screenplay writers, a movie director, a drama teacher and regional development managers – were collaborating in a specific sequence involving different types of risks and uncertainties. The SECI cycle of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) is taken as a guideline, but other knowledge management concepts (e.g. communities of practice by Wenger (1998) or interactions by Bettiol et al. (2012)) are also used to show how knowledge dynamics evolve over time. The presentation analyses the case. The research relies on project documentation as well as interviews with the project participants.
First, the original intention of the creators is presented, highlighting the teachers’ focus on students attitudes as well as the three different educational intentions of (i) showing the world of innovations, (ii) extending it to macro-social levels, (iii) developing awareness towards today’s innovation in the narrower local environment of the students. These three intentions had proven to be a structural determination throughout the project.
Second, the content selection process is analysed, namely (a) how 62 students were surveyed (and the results were used for drafting the screenplays); (b) how the documentarist approach has been changed to a more creative dramatic-narrative hybrid format, and (c) how the screenplay-writers had been confronted with the educational content (consisting of factual knowledge about innovation as well as the previously developed list of attitudes). Naturally, educational facts that are closer to the narrative are learnt better than distant facts (Glaser et al. (2012)), and this technique narrowed down the cognitive space for continuing the content development.
Third, the movie-making and DVD finalisation procedure is described briefly, including the documentary inserts between the three parts of the movie, which were developed to further enhance the teaching (as well as the learning) experience and to assist the accompanying handbook developed for the teachers.
Last, the impact measurement, which involved nearly 1500 students is analysed. The survey results point to the extent to which the original attitude changing intentions of the developer team have been fulfilled.
Overall, for a specific educational case, the filmmaking experience demonstrates the spiral and dynamic nature of knowledge development over the SECI cycle as well as the usability of scientific and interdisciplinary approaches to new educational content development.
