Introduction As pointed out by Christensen and Neergaard (in press), “learning is related to the environment created for the learning experience” and it comes with specific routinazations and structures which shape and determine the educational practices. The auditorium and the classroom-like lecture rooms so dominant at the universities incite specific pedagogical and didactical “routines and rituals”: lectures come with specific hierarchical roles ascribed to the lecturer (the provider of knowledge) and the students (the receivers of knowledge).
Methods Inspired by theories on entrepeneurship education and also methods for ‘gamifying’ education (Sandvik 2016), this paper claims that the routines and rituals described above may go against ideas about creating learning environments that are engaging and inspiring and which urge the students to be in charge of their own learning processes and development. They (may) work counter to making students active and to provide a sense of being part of an academic environment. They contradict the idea that learning is not (just) about acquiring knowledge, it is also about researching and creating knowledge.
Results The paper present and discuss a case in which a MA course in cross media communication was turned into a research laboratory providing the students with roles as researcher. The students took part in an ongoing field of research concerning methods and theories within this particular field of communication studies and invited them theorize and analyze the specific topics of said research field in collaboration with senior researchers. As a research team, they were provided with a series of research questions and the task to engage in a research project-like process and to create research reports during the course and present them at conference-like workshops.
Discussion This paper will present and discuss the experiences and evaluations from the perspective of the students as well as the course organizers.