Innovez dans votre enseignement

Innovate in teaching to respond to a changing reality

Why do we talk about Innovative pedagogies in CIVIS? And why do we think it should be a transversal component of our educational offering? When it comes to education, "innovation" can be a misleading term: its meaning changes from one place to another and over time: what is new today will not be new tomorrow.

Talking about teaching innovation could give the false impression that what is new, just for the sake of being new, is more valuable than a traditional method, which is not true. The expression tends to divert attention from the essential issue: teaching is about facilitating learning. Sometimes it will require innovative methods and tools and sometimes not.

So why do we talk about innovative pedagogies in CIVIS? Because CIVIS is what is new. It is new from a global perspective, in the sense that European universities alliances emerge at a time of reconfiguration of the higher education space, which has to respond to the needs of an increasingly digital, intercultural and exposed to global challenges society. But it is also new in a very concrete sense, insofar as CIVIS represents an educational context of its own.

Three reasons to innovate

All educational activities are co-created by academics from, at least, three different universities. This means three different social, pedagogical and academic backgrounds. If we want to develop really intercultural and transdisciplinary approaches for our students, we need to learn how to work together in order to take advantage of these differences.
Most of our courses and programs are, partially or totally, developed in a virtual environment. And this is not about tools, or not mainly. Digital transformation is, above all, about information: information being everywhere, at any time, and in a more fragmented and visual way that it used to be. And this has an impact on the teacher’s role and on the student's learning possibilities, as information is no longer only consumed, but also produced and shared.
CIVIS aims to respond to global and local challenges. We need to build bridges between the classroom and civil society in order to share knowledge and respond together to problems that concern us all as society. And this, of course, changes the function of the classroom itself, traditionally understood as the physical space where learning occurs.

This draws a new educational landscape for educators, for students and also for learning designers. This is why the CIVIS vision on innovative pedagogies is not about giving ready-made responses, but about working together to find the teaching approaches best suited to a changing reality. We think that the only way to develop transformative learning experiences is to promote a collaborative culture that seeks creative solutions to a very concrete educational context.

Key areas of pedagogical innovation in CIVIS

This approach is based on the principle that the active participation of students in a real-world problem has benefits for their learning. To this end, they are confronted with a relevant challenge, for which a concrete action is demanded. The process involves the student understanding the nature of the challenge, engaging with actors or communities involved and, based on this, analyzing, designing and developing a “solution”, usually in the form of a project. One important note: learning is not measured in terms of the success of that solution in the real world, but in terms of the knowledge and skills that the student has acquired during the process, which should be measurable through evaluation.

Available resources

Service Learning is a pedagogical approach that integrates meaningful community service or engagement into the curriculum and offers students academic credit for the learning that derives from active engagement within the community and work on a real-world problem. Reflection and experiential learning strategies underpin the learning process and the service is linked to the academic discipline. Service-learning projects have a focus on social justice and sustainable development. Actions are aimed at the environment and at people and groups living in scenarios of social disadvantage, exclusion and/or risk of exclusion.

Available resources

A large part of the CIVIS educational offer is developed in a virtual or a blended environment. The quality of our educational offer depends, in part, on how the digital dimension is integrated into the courses and programmes design. This implies taking advantage of the potential of technology to create learning experiences that would not be possible without it. But, at the same time, it requires a redefinition of the teaching framework that considers that learning is no longer limited to the time and space of the classroom. In CIVIS we are committed to the challenges that this scenario poses for teaching, and we explore innovative methodologies that allow us to improve the quality of our educational offerings.

Available resources:

CIVIS guidelines to create digitally enhanced courses (MS 8.6):

All educational activities are co-created by academics from, at least, 3 different universities. This means 3 different social, pedagogical and academic backgrounds. In CIVIS, we believe it is essential to design effective strategies for the co-construction of our educational offer. This implies, among other things, reflecting together on elements such as transdisciplinarity, the place of stakeholders and students in the course design, the role of instructional and visual designers, the value of intercultural facilitators and so on. In CIVIS we explore teaching methodologies that harness the potential of collaboration.

This ecosystem is made up of different working groups, both at the level of the alliance and at the level of the universities, which do not always work together. Locally, the great challenge is to identify experts in each of the universities and include them in the process of reflection on the teaching transformation in CIVIS. At the alliance level, the goal is to build bridges between the groups that already exist so that ideas and collaborative projects with a positive impact on our students can emerge. These are some of the voices working in CIVIS in the field of pedagogical innovation.

Innovative Pedagogies Officer: the person responsible for the coordination and implementation of innovative pedagogies in CIVIS activities with the support of the Expert Group on Innovative Pedagogies.
Expert Group on Innovative Pedagogies: made up of experts from the 11 CIVIS member universities, its main functions are to promote creative solutions to CIVIS teaching challenges and to facilitate liaison with experts in specific fields within their universities, whenever needed.
Stream on Embedded Joint Educational Offer: the team in charge of assuring that innovative pedagogies becomes a structural component in CIVIS, as it develops the frameworks for a coherent joint educational offer.
Stream on Challenge-based Education and Civic Engagement: the team responsible for the strategy to create links between academia and civil society. Its work has a direct impact on the development of teaching methods best suited to the societal challenges identified.
Experts Groups on Civic Engagement and Service Learning: Also composed of experts from the 11 European member universities, their role is to ensure that these two areas permeate the CIVIS educational offerings. Some of their interests are common to the Expert Group on “Innovative Pedagogies”