Events

The conference will bring together relevant stakeholders from higher education, with a focus on academics. Drawing on discussions, panels and best practice presentations, participants will explore the challenges but also the potential of recent innovations in terms of advancing education and international cooperation, while they will also get the chance to meet counterparts from all over Europe in the framework of an exchange of practices, teamwork, collaboration and peer learning event.
The focus of this event will be on sharing experience and best practice in the use of digital pedagogies to enhance international teaching activities and learning about digital methods to execute future projects such as student mobility – new mobility formats, COIL, joint programmes, etc.

Challenges: 

In present times, counting the effects the Covid-19 pandemic has had across the board, as well as in the higher education sector, digital transformations have gained new momentum and new scope. Higher education institutions have experienced a digitalisation surge in the past couple of years, which has led to severe changes in teaching and learning. This digitisation push has admittedly brought forward exceptional opportunities for the institutions, overall, and the staff and students in particular, but at the same time, many questions have arisen about the challenges and limits of this ‘digital experiment’.

A shift from initial ‘emergency online teaching and learning’ to better thought out and more pedagogically effective use of technology can be currently observed. While many of the benefits from digital methods used, showcase that changes implemented are here to stay, progress is uneven and there is a need to improve practice in online methods, identify "success and quality characteristics" of pedagogical practice and help enhance and inform delivery in the pursuit of a new educational paradigm.

Activities:

The event will be divided in two days, including expert panels with discussions guided by the relevant European and national policies and funding opportunities and best practices presentations, exploring methods used, discussing added value and relevant challenges. The conference will also provide dedicated space for lab sessions, giving participants the opportunity to exchange, start thinking and possibly co-develop new project ideas with facilitation offered by experts.

Format: interesting and engaging keynote speech; panels and good practice examples presentations; lab day focusing on four thematic areas – workshop style, with the aim of incubating new project ideas.

The participants are expected to develop better understanding of Digital transformation journey: building digital capacity and competence in teaching staff for blended learning; to know how to foster ongoing collaboration between academic and IT leaders to execute strategic goals and will be familiar with the bottlenecks in uptake of digital education in the higher education context from an academic perspective and how to overcome them.

[a] Academic and teaching staff from HEIs

[b] Staff supporting HE teachers for digital pedagogy

[c] Accompanying NA staff interested or working in the area of digital pedagogies