White Paper
In its first White Paper, the Think and Do tank shares an initial joint understanding of its mission, its way of working and its main development strategy.
Shaping the Future of Higher Education in a Changing World
Mapping of pedagogical innovations
Mapping of pedagogical innovations will pave the way for wider collaboration and sharing of good practice. To begin with, we consider innovation in sustainable education under four categories, the 4Is.
Mapping of pedagogical innovations
Think & Do Tank Café
The Circle U. Think & Do Tank Cafés will gather professors, students and admin staff from the nine Circle U. universities to exchange and share best practices in the field of teaching and learning in Higher Education. A large part of the discussions will be devoted to the transformation of curricula and teaching practices in higher education, with a strong focus on pedagogical innovation.
The Cafés will take the shape of hybrid workshops. Progressively, these meetings will help build a network of innovators in pedagogy willing to engage in continuous professional development through a community of practices.
- 10 March 2023: Training Healthcare Students using Immersive Simulations
- 24 January 2023: Students’ Assessment and Sustainable Development (reflections by four master’s students)
- 8 September 2022: Circle U. Think and Do Tank Café: Multilingualism Week at King’s College London
- 28 April 2022: Circle U. Think and Do Tank Café on Micro-Collaborations
Resources from Circle U. Learning and Teaching Centres
Because Circle U. universities are innovative and resourceful, professionals working at Learning and Teaching centres at the different member universities have shown a keen interest in sharing their knowledge, experience and tools within the alliance. Thanks to the innovators’ network that the Think and Do Tank Cafés will progressively build, this collaborative space will be fed up paving the way toward an international mutualisation of resources, training and practices in pedagogical innovation in higher education.
- Distance learning techniques as integration and enrichment of face-to-face teaching (first edition) (unipi.it)
- Infopool better teaching: Start Page (univie.ac.at)
- AU Educate: Inspiration for your teaching (educate.au.dk)
- Louvain Learning Lab: Resources and publications (uclouvain.be)
Academic Chairs
- Lisbeth M. Brevik, University of Oslo
- Min Reuchamps, UCLouvain
- Veljko Mijušković, University of Belgrade
- Gabriel Reedy, King's College London
- Grégoire Borst, Université Paris Cité
- Anne Enderwitz, HU Berlin
- Marco Abate, University of Pisa
- Susan Wright, Aarhus University
About the Think and Do Tank
The Circle U. Think and Do Tank engages with students and external stakeholders with the aim to influence the policy agenda on higher education.
At the same time, it very much focuses on its «do» mission and seeks to contribute to transforming curricula and teaching methods towards sustainable education within the alliance itself, not only by providing courses on sustainable development, but also by ensuring that education will have a major impact on the sustainability of our societies.
Sustainable education means finding innovative and creative ways of teaching and learning, focusing on interdisciplinary knowledge and taking into account the contribution of students. The Think and Do Tank will promote a quality learning environment and academic success for students by imagining, experimenting and disseminating new ways of teaching and learning.
Multilingualism, being an important topic for our alliance, the Think and Do Tank will work to identify obstacles related to the ambition of Europeans speaking two foreign languages; based on the findings we will develop a dedicated project, including seeking co-funding, with the aim of addressing the obstacles identified.
Challenges related to IT and education, whether it is the digital skills gap or the future of digital education, will also be at the forefront of the critical reflection.