Part 2: Overview of Themes and Ideas
This post follows on from my initial post about the IDW event at the Campus Saint Jean d’Angély of Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, France. My notes have been enhanced through the power of AI summarisation, although human editing has ensured this is exactly what I want to say and is accurate to my experience.
Key theme: Digital Transformation in Higher Education
- Overview and Policy Landscape: Ida Velthoven, Policy and Research Officer at the European University Foundation (EUF), provided an evidence-based perspective on how digital transformation is reconfiguring international higher education, focusing on initiatives like Erasmus Without Paper, Online Learning Agreement, and MyAcademicID to streamline administrative processes and enhance mobility. The EUF itself consists of 96 institutions working towards modernizing higher education and accelerating digital transformation. Resource.
- Strategic Change and Collaboration: Sarah Knight and Simon Birkett from JISC presented their framework and maturity model for digital transformation, emphasizing the importance of fostering a culture of collaboration across leadership, academic, and professional services teams to drive purposeful and sustainable change. Their workshop aimed to help institutions assess digital maturity and create actionable plans.
- Organizational Innovation: Adel Ben Youssef from UniCA discussed the complementarity between new organizational innovation and digital technologies, highlighting that technology alone often fails to deliver performance gains unless accompanied by structural, managerial, and cultural changes.
- Digital Identity and Safety: Lyubov Stafyeyeva from Management Center Innsbruck (MCI) facilitated a workshop on digital identity and safety, exploring how educators can critically examine their digital footprints and manage their online presence and professional identity.
- Digital Credentials: Another workshop led by Lyubov Stafyeyeva introduced the potential of digital credentials, micro-credentials, and digital badges for recognizing skills gained both inside and outside the classroom. Resources.
Key theme: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Higher Education
- Rethinking Classroom and Digital Culture: Robin Couture-Matte from TÉLUQ University facilitated a workshop on “The AI Revolution in HEd: Rethinking Classroom and Digital Culture.” This session explored how AI is reshaping classroom and institutional culture, challenging educators to redefine their roles and uphold academic integrity. Key concepts included institutional and classroom culture, influenced by values, beliefs, perceptions, and events, juxtaposed with ‘climate’ that stems from perceptions and events. The workshop aimed to move from a culture of fear to innovation by revisiting rules, providing context-specific guidelines, and reinforcing culture through interventions. Resources.
- Support and Competency Building: ALFALABS, represented by Julia Reinhart from Haaga-Helia, presented on support for AI in teaching and learning and assessing/building AI-related competencies in Higher Education (HEd) through a “Living Lab” approach with teachers and students. (see image below left)
- AI Tools and Applications: Workshops covered Generative AI (GenAI), including effective prompting strategies and advanced use cases for reflective practice and student tutoring. Specific AI tools mentioned for finding information included ChatPDF, Consensus.app, and Elicit.com. Participants also explored how educators can leverage AI tools to enhance teaching, learning, and student engagement. AI roles and trusts, including AI for specific procedures (e.g., maths) versus holistic procedures (e.g., brainstorming), were discussed.
- Ethical Considerations of AI: Discussions revolved around virtual collaboration and ethics in the age of AI, addressing challenges such as AI responsibility, mitigating AI bias, ensuring equitable AI use, and the complexities of authorship in human-AI collaborations. Ethical frameworks and AI’s role in supporting, not replacing, human expertise, were also emphasized, especially in healthcare education. Participants explored their ethical and professional responsibilities in Human-AI Teaming Systems (HAITS), emphasizing transparency and modeling AI use.
- Continuous Assessment in the AI Era: Simon Carolan from Learnalign led a workshop on rethinking evaluation strategies. This included process-oriented evaluation (e.g., logbooks), AI-assisted feedback loops (e.g., automatic draft analysis), and authentic evaluation (e.g., collaborative projects). Tools like Grammarly, ChatGPT, Turnitin, Trello, Monday, Moodle learning analytic suites, Perusall, and 360 Learning were mentioned.
- AI Literacy: The METACOG project from Haaga-Helia University focused on AI literacy to tackle disinformation and fake news, developing a taxonomy and training programs. (image on left)
- AI in Course Design and Assignments: Workshops explored how generative AI can support every stage of course design and how to design student assignments that require AI tools to foster critical engagement and future-ready skills.
Key theme: Internationalisation through Digitalisation
- Internationalisation at Home (I@H): Christine Evain from University of Rennes 2 discussed the challenges of internationalisation at home and internal perspectives on European projects aimed at fostering international engagement within the university. Resources.
- Transformative Internationalisation: Luciane Stallivieri from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil, spoke about a strategic and holistic approach to internationalisation that drives innovation, enhances global citizenship, and creates lasting positive change. Luciane also shared the ‘Responsible Internationalization Basic Roadmap’ (image below right). Resource: Moving minds: opportunities and challenges for virtual student mobility in a post-pandemic world
- Virtual Exchange (VE) and COIL: Workshops explored how Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) can be reimagined with AI, enhancing cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and professional development experiences. The concept of Virtual Exchange (VE) was extensively discussed as a form of online collaborative learning, including its potential to develop foreign language and intercultural competence and contribute to I@H initiatives. Concrete examples of virtual collaboration formats like COIL and Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs) fostering intercultural competence and digital literacy in foreign language education were presented. Resources: VE formats,
- Global Citizenship and Cross-Border Collaboration: The “Be Global Act Local” project, involving Finland and Côte d’Azur, focused on teacher training and a pedagogy for global citizenship framework, emphasizing gamification and using AI as a co-partner. There was also a strong emphasis on strengthening cross-border collaboration and flexible learning opportunities to enhance student choice and socialized global learning, aiming for a “flatter and glocalized” world by 2050.
- COIL and the AI revolution: A stimulating conversation across sessions of how COIL can be reimagined in the era of AI. Osvaldo Succi Jr. Paula Souza Center, Brazil shared approaches to virtual exchange using innovative approaches in a rapidly changing digital world.
Key theme: Metaverse, Virtual Spaces, and Engaging Students in Virtual Learning
- The Metaverse: Apostolos Altiparmakis from Syncnify facilitated a session on “Metaverse and Virtual Spaces: The Next Frontier,” defining the metaverse (coined in 1992 by Neal Stephenson) and discussing its potential impact on communication, collaboration, education, and entertainment. Projects like ‘CheckMate’ using Spatial.io were highlighted for education in the metaverse. Resources.
- Virtual Environments and Tools: Discussions included the use of Virtual World Rennes22D for 2D campus models and an Open Educational Resources (OER) centre. Gather Town was mentioned as being upgraded to WorkAdventure, which offers a free tier for up to 15 users.
- Engaging Students in Virtual Learning: Mirjam Gamrasni from Haaga-Helia and Jean-Loic Cavazza from Université Côte d’Azur shared insights from Ulysseus European University, a collaboration of eight universities offering 50 jointly created courses in varied online formats (self-paced, online classes, Micros, MOOCs) with a huge language program (11 languages). Their platform uses KeyCloack for authentication, Moodle 4.3, H5P Plugin, and other plugins like Genially and PeerWork, also offering open badges and course quality control processes. They discussed challenges like attrition rates (20-50%) and motivating students without social interaction, contrasting self-paced courses with instructor-led and collaborative models.
- Gamification and Immersive Experiences: Learning games for environmental awareness, developed in a Brazil-Belgium partnership, involved students working in virtual teams to clean rivers. Game Development Based Learning (GDBL) was presented as an approach where students learn by developing educational games. Workshops also explored how talking maps, in-class escape games, and virtual worlds can improve engagement through storytelling and gamification.
Key theme: Teaching Skills, Digital Soft Skills, and Future Thinking
- Digital Soft Skills: Design and Future Thinking: David Mauffret and Katja Danska from Haaga-Helia led a workshop on “Design and Future Thinking,” introducing participants to fundamentals of design thinking and future foresight, using collaborative megatrends cards from the Finnish Sitra fund and a “future remembrance” method. This aimed to equip participants to be “change makers” who can drive positive transformation by thinking about future alternatives and shaping a preferred future. (I mentioned my participation in this session in the first blog post).
- Stimulating Metacognition: Fabrizio Bracco and Micaela Rossi from UniGE discussed how digital tools can stimulate metacognition and reflexivity in higher education, highlighting the role of tools from instant poll apps to AI-based technologies in fostering self-awareness and reflective practices. Resource.
- Critical Thinking in the Digital Space: Natalia Timuș from Université Côte d’Azur facilitated a workshop on developing a culture of inquiry and debate for critical thinking in the digital space, crucial for tackling complex real-world challenges. Resource.
- TikTok in Education: Haaga-Helia University showcased their “TikTok University” initiative, a 1-credit course on TikTok, in response to students’ preference for scrolling over reading and TikTok’s status as a major news source in Finland. This initiative focused on investing social media in education and leveraging student-generated content. (image on right)
- Co-creation for Digital Transformation: Julia Reinhard from Haaga-Helia presented co-creation as a key strategy for advancing digital transformation in higher education, engaging participants in simulated co-creation sessions to address institutional challenges collaboratively. Resources.
Although I did not attend Julia’s session on co-creation (!) I want to give a special shoutout to this excellent resource for al higher education institutions to learn skills, behaviours and new mindsets around collaboration of new ideas. It includes essential case studies and example as evidence of the power of this approach.
Overall, IDW was an excellent multi-cultural, multi-university, collaborative event. Kudos to the Universite Cote D’Azur team for once again designing and running a valuable learning experience for us all. Thank you also to the European Erasmus+ funding that supports this knowledge sharing and co-creation in a time of uncertainty around the future directions of higher education and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence into an environment that is still largely grappling with what digital transformation might look like.
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