For teachers

Forum 2024: Building the future of higher education

ECIU University held its first Forum with the title 'Education for a resilient and sustainable world', last June. In Kaunas, Lithuania, at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), more than 200 participants from fourteen European countries came together. More than 80 teachers, 70 staff members and 60 students arrived for two days of unique workshops, discussions and inspiring presentations – with 38 parallel sessions taking place. The purpose of the meeting was to strengthen mutual co-operation, exchange knowledge and information, develop new ideas, and make new connections. The common denominator was the future of education and innovation. Read the findings of our UT colleagues here. (Photo credits: Justina Šuminaitė (KTU), Jonas Klėmanas (KTU), Viktorija Lankauskaitė (KTU), Andrius Staniulis.)

Family gathering

'I really liked the forum as it seemed a bit like a family gathering and was informal- making sure participants felt comfortable- therefore presenters were comfortable in sharing their honest experiences of their teaching practices and findings. There were a lot of parallel sessions and I felt like I was missing out on a lot of interesting talks. Maybe the forum should be a bit longer? On the other hand, because it seemed like a family gathering, new participants, like me, felt a bit out of place and afraid to join in the discussions.

At the forum, I learned of various teaching methods and their successful implementations. I attended the forum in hopes that I would have the opportunity to learn a bit more about the implementation of challenge-based learning. However, at the forum, I was exposed to the possibilities of using serious games in education. I aim to follow up on the potential of using serious games in education

I think it is a great opportunity for UT students and teachers to be a part of such a forum to learn from others, as well as for the teachers at the UT to be appreciated for their efforts in a community that values teaching.'

Arlene John, Assistant Professor Biomedical Signals and Systems

Many opportunities to network

'I was genuinely impressed by the warm and welcoming atmosphere at the ECIU Forum. Despite my somewhat active involvement in ECIU activities in the past years, I do not know many people within the network. Despite that, I felt very welcomed and had the feeling of being part of a community of people with the same purpose: Connect for life.

From the student volunteers to the dedicated ECIU staff, everyone was enthusiastic. Their passion and commitment to organize an exceptional event were clear in every detail – goodie bags, music video, or Team Impact Award. The most memorable example for me was the conference dinner, which seamlessly transformed into a lively party.

This event also provided many opportunities to network with colleagues from different universities and discuss potential future collaborations which I considered particularly valuable for me as an academic staff. As a member of UT, I was also very thankful to connect with colleagues from my own university. This event allowed me to learn about what is happening at UT, learn about the research and educational activities of my colleagues and the challenges they are facing within the same academic system, and even explore possibilities for collaboration. It was also very refreshing to interact with them in a less formal setting, beyond the usual professional context.'

Nikola Nizamis, lecturer in Humanitarian Engineering

Connect with colleagues

What is your overall impression of the Forum?

‘I really enjoyed the Forum and it impressed me how well it was organized, especially after hearing that this was the first time it was organized. The laser show during the opening ceremony was very impressive and set the tone for the rest of the Forum, engaging and just a bit different from what you would expect.’

What lessons will you take home with you? Will there be any follow-ups?

‘I facilitated a workshop myself and I loved how engaged the participants were, this will help me a lot in further developing this workshop. Beside that I got mostly inspired by the workshops and presentations, nothing that I can apply immediately, but to keep in mind for the long term.’

And then UT specifically; what's in it for our UT colleagues in a Forum like this? What are the benefits?

‘To connect with colleagues from other universities that are interested in similar topics, especially in a more informal way through the community oriented atmosphere created by the Forum.’

Irene Wols, PhD Candidate Transdisciplinary Education

UT employees Adina Imanbayeva and Robin de Graaf developed a tool to take teachers step by step towards Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) in their education. The launch took place last Tuesday during the Week of Education.

Challenge-based learning plays an important role in your day-to-day work, please tell …..

Imanbayeva:‘I got acquainted with CBL while supporting ECIU CBL pilots at UT, and this inspired me to start a thesis on it and start my career as a CBL educational advisor. My master's thesis was entitled: Challenge-based Learning for developing students' sense of impact. Robin was my supervisor at the time.'

De Graaf: 'That's right. And I was a Teaching and Learning Fellow, which meant that I could devote one day a week to educational innovation for two years. Together with six other colleagues. And challenge-based learning was the theme. We were collecting a lot of information about CBL, but we also found that all that knowledge was quite fragmented.' (text continues below picture)

Imanbayeva: 'The idea arose to bring more structure to the available information about how CBL was building on existing education. That's what I started working on. I was trying to capture the variety of CBL implementations in practice through the CBL intensity levels and describe how education can grow into CBL step by step.’

How did you end up with a tool?

Imanbayeva: ‘We developed our conceptual model around Van den Akker’s Curricular Spider Web, which captures all the components of a curriculum, from learning rationale, objectives, and activities to grouping, teacher role, and assessment. As a result, we defined Mild-Moderate-Intense CBL levels for nine components. This was turned into an app by the Mendix team from LISA and put on a website. Lecturers can now define the level of CBL intensity a course, and, if they want, also make changes step by step towards becoming more challenge-based.

Why is that important?

De Graaf: 'It may well be that a teacher already has CBL characteristics in his or her course, but is not aware of them. And for some colleagues, CBL can be a big step, while the tool allows them to take small steps.'

Imanbayeva: 'In the end, it is a step beyond traditional education, where learning is intensely student-led. In the most intense form of CBL, it is the student who determines his learning objectives. The teacher may provide advice or guidelines but doesn’t define the goals together with individual students.’

De Graaf: 'A lot of education is all about the content. You would like your students to be able to calculate with certain formulas, for example, at the end of the class period. At CBL, soft skills are more central, for example creativity, communication and collaboration.'

Imanbayeva: ‘In CBL, the focus is on the process of learning itself. Students get to work on a societal problem that they care about by determining what knowledge and skills they need to acquire to meaningfully contribute to the resolution of a societal problem. However, the main focus in CBL is not on what the students deliver in the end, but how they got there, what decisions they made, how they changed/developed, how they reflect, what they would do differently/the same, what impact the experience had on them. Students also focus on personal development.’

Why do we want this as UT?

De Graaf: 'At UT’s strategic level, challenge-based learning is mentioned as a way to prepare students for future challenges. CBL is a complementary learning method and does not replace other teaching methods. It’s an addition to the existing educational landscape.’

Imanbayeva: ‘We develop the tool to support teachers in implementing CBL and capture the practices we have generated in the years of CBL experimentation.’

De Graaf: 'The most important thing is that there is a platform that teachers can refer to reflect, experiment, and share their practices.’

Imanbayeva: ' Anyone online can access the tool right now. We are considering the 4TU and ECIU networks for strategic dissemination and further development of the tool.’

Check the tool here.

Adina Imanbayeva serves as an educational advisor and researcher at the Centre of Expertise in Learning and Teaching (CELT). With a deep commitment to advancing meaningful and authentic education, Imanbayeva specialises in Challenge-based Learning (CBL), a field where she has developed substantial expertise. She is particularly skilled in CBL course design and research, supporting teachers in creating engaging educational experiences and sharing the knowledge gained from these efforts. In addition to her advisory role, Imanbayeva is currently pursuing a PhD focused on student empowerment.

Robin de Graaf is an Associate Lecturer at the Department of Civil Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering Technology. His teaching focuses on the design management of construction projects in general, and on Systems Engineering and Value Management in particular. De Graaf has been a Teaching and Learning Fellow for two years around the theme of challenge-based learning.

University lecturer Sikke Jansma took part in challenge-based learning at ECIU University. He enthusiastically talks about this new way of teaching and learning.

‘As a teacher, you have a coaching role in challenge-based learning (CBL). And that takes some getting used to. The students set their own learning goals, for example, and they all have a different educational background. That means that, as a teacher, you don’t have all the knowledge. That is quite exciting.It was my job to guide, motivate and coach the students

'During my project, a participant had a civil engineering background. Completely different compared to my communication background, but that doesn’t matter. It was my job to guide, motivate and coach the students. You guide the students in their teamwork, how they can give feedback on their results to the client, you motivate them when things get tough and you help them to find the information they need. Very instructive. It’s important that as a teacher you’re open to different forms of teaching and the corresponding feedback you receive.’  

‘The best thing about challenge-based learning is the innovative nature of this form of education. Moreover, it is a concept that links students from all over Europe because they are working on the same challenge. The structure is very open and the students are problem owners in every respect. They are responsible for defining the challenge and they have to organise the surrounding process themselves, such as the frequency of consultation, teamwork, who does what and the research. They are a consultancy firm, as it were.’

MOBILITY HUB

‘My challenge was about a new mobility hub around the Enschede train station. The assignment came from the municipality of Enschede. The question was about making the station area future-proof, looking beyond buses and trains. The students, two UT graduates and two from Hamburg University of Technology, ultimately delivered an advisory report containing a 3D design of how the station could look, both architecturally and functionally.’

NEXT STEP

‘The students were satisfied with the result. They did find the openness of the challenge difficult. They missed a structure, but that has now been built in. I see CBL as the next step after the Twente Educational Model (TOM). Within the UT, we are already very innovative in terms of education, and this is another step forward. If you are open to a new way of teaching, then challenge-based learning is certainly interesting.’

Would you like to know more? Send an e-mail to cbl-ces@twente.n

Le Anh Nguyen Long is assistant professor of Public Administration. She supervises the University of the Future challenge in which six students participate. ‘I learn to let go of students and let them struggle with a problem.’

According to Nguyen Long, letting go was a personal challenge. To not take up the role of teacher straight away, but to be a so-called “teamcher.” Which requires a shift in mindset from instructor to coach and guide. ‘The students are really thrown in at the deep end with a challenge. They swim, they complain, they don’t feel comfortable and they don’t really know what to do with the problem in question.’

And it is precisely this ‘not knowing’ that is a core value of challenge-based learning. The assignment description is so large and sometimes vague that participants must first discuss and define which part of the problem they want to work on. ‘Students need structure and there was none. They find it difficult. And I could keep saying, “No, return to the questions.” It is a different role than being a teacher. The great thing was that the students finally got a grip on the issue. We own it!, they realized. And they understood that through the process beforehand, they had really taken ownership of their challenge.’

DIFFERENT WAY OF TEACHING

According to Nguyen Long, she is doing well in her new role. ‘But,’ she says. ‘Such a different way of teaching has to suit you. I think that challenge-based learning is not suitable for every teacher. And it doesn’t have to be. Some teachers really enjoy being the expert. But in an interdisciplinary group like ECIU University, you are not always the expert in the relevant topics. Teamching has to be something you want. In addition, you have to see the students as adults who work on solutions together with lifelong learners and others from the field.’

COMPLEMENTARY

Her colleague Sjoerd de Vries asked if she wanted to take part in a CBL pilot. ‘Because he recommended me, I said yes. I think highly of him. Another reason to participate is my experience as a labour market analyst for the US state of Indiana and I helped draft the 2004 State of Indiana Strategic Development Plan. In that latter capacity I talked to a lot of stakeholders and government parties, also in neighbouring states and found out that students are not really well prepared for working life. The theory is fine, but other skills are needed on the work floor too. Think of interpersonal skills. What is it like to work in a team? How do I take the lead? Or another role? How do you build long-term relationships with partners? That triggered me to participate in challenge-based learning. You have two types of knowledge. On the one hand there is the theory, but on the other hand students need so-called soft skills. Learning those skills has been built into the CBL concept from the start and that makes CBL quite complementary to regular education.’

Would you like to know more? Send an e-mail to: cbl-ces@twente.nl

Or read teacher Sikke Jansma’s story here and be inspired.

OVER 30 SUBMISSIONS, 26 OF WHICH WERE ACCEPTED

The recent call to submit a proposal for the implementation of challenge-based learning in university education did not go unnoticed. A total of 32 proposals were submitted, of which 26 have now been honoured. The total available budget of 368 thousand euros has been spent. Responsible for organizing were UT and ECIU University.

The purpose of the call is to encourage educational innovation. ‘And this time the focus is on challenge-based learning’, says Rianne Kaptijn, Local Ambassador of ECIU, the European Consortium of European Universities. ‘Together with the UT, we want to encourage challenge-based learning (CBL) in education. During this learning method, students work on real, existing assignments and do so in teams in which professionals and researchers also participate.’

Kaptijn is ‘very happy’ with the number of initiatives, which are also very diverse. For example, there is a minor called ‘cold case’. In which, as the name suggests, students from UT and Saxion work together with the police academy on an unsolved crime. ‘And there are challenges from the EEMCS faculty about energy transition and CBL in Computer Science. Also very exciting. The TNW faculty, among others, came up with natural and engineering research in challenge-based learning, yet also with a question about the role of the teacher in CBL’, says Kaptijn.

Proposals could be submitted at various levels: course (19), faculty (1) and cross-faculty level (5). The content varied on three themes: improving the quality of CBL as a teaching method (15), strengthening external relations (9) and strategic, organisation-oriented proposals (2).

Challenge-based learning is high on the University of Twente's agenda and fits in with its ambitions concerning educational innovation. The ECIU University, a partner of the UT, offers room to experiment with CBL and other innovative teaching methods.

Would you like to know more? Send an e-mail to: cbl-ces@twente.nl

Or read teacher Sikke Jansma’s story here and be inspired.

At the Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, lecturer Farzaneh Dadrass Javan teaches photogrammetry, in which Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) play a large role. Combining education on UAVs with Challenge Based Learning is a clear focus for 2022: 'We got a green light on a project proposal for a call at the UT to innovate our education regarding UAV Photogrammetry', states Dadrass Javan.  

Experts in agriculture, urban planning, and disaster management are using UAVs for data collection and information extraction. However, these professionals often operate without having any specific education in photogrammetry. 'Education modules would need to be embedded in a framework closer to their professional interests, different from traditional teaching methods. In this regard, CBL looks a promising solution for this purpose as it can perfectly tailor the content for different backgrounds and needs,' says Dadrass Javan.

'UAV photogrammetry is normally taught using a traditional approach, giving relatively extensive explanations on the algorithmic background. It is often far from the expectations of students with a limited mathematical background. Problems faced in agriculture, food security, and cultural heritage can be reformulated in the CBL framework, facilitating the understanding of the students and the development of innovative solutions through education and playing a bridging role from the academic environment and end-users demands.'

THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION

'A lot of our education is taught in a ‘traditional’ way, without considering the different needs, backgrounds, and expectations of students. Lifelong learning, refreshers, tailor-made courses, and other capacity building activities are directions that the University of Twente is going to follow in the coming years to adopt the educational system more with the real needs of students, and challenge based learning can support them all. CBL is particularly suitable for students from other domains that want to gain knowledge in a new discipline to solve challenges in their domains', states Dadrass Javan. The ISPRS project aims at delivering guidelines on how to deliver UAV photogrammetry education in a Challenge Based Learning framework for our community. The guidelines will be organized according to written texts, micro-lectures, and webinars. In addition, the project will fine-tune this educational methodology on a real pilot course to point possible problems out in the early stage and give a practical example to our community.