School as a Service: Platform for Learning in Upper Secondary Education operating on Aalto University Campus

New demands for school education, new ways of learning, and sustainability challenges, challenge conventional spatial solutions. In accordance with schools having faced considerable changes in their pedagogical principles in Europe, one can expect a justified change from a traditional school building to more flexible environment supporting varying needs and social learning. This paper explores the themes of networked services, service platforms, and resilience through a case study, School as a Service (SaaS), developed and implemented in the City of Espoo, Finland, in collaboration with Aalto University. It describes the concept, its design process and the evaluation of its users’ experience at the current stage of the experiment in 2019. SaaS is designed as a platform for learning, which has the capacity to react to the changing needs of the schools, offers new kinds of social and interactive learning experiences and fosters learners to take active role in their education. Leaning on the engagement platform, this practice offers a user-based, cross-disciplinary approach to learning, supported by digital tools and framed within sustainable development. The concept is based on the optimization of the use of spaces and resilient solutions, by sharing the school facilities with Aalto University in its campus, integrating an upper secondary school with university premises and community.