Black or white. Never grey

Here we are again, playing the same game.

Higher education often falls into binary thinking—adopting “all in” or “all out” approaches—while neglecting the nuanced middle ground. This is both puzzling and problematic, particularly in a context that is meant to value critical thinking.

Lately I’ve been noticing how two competing forces are fighting for a place both in our teaching and learning practice and in education policies. On the one hand, there is a strong drive towards using technology and specifically towards integrating AI as much as possible in teaching, learning, and research. On the other hand, what has become more prominent recently is the push (and implementation, often under the radar) for device-free classrooms.

I see a clear tension here. As educators and educational developers, we are expected to promote and support the use of technology (currently especially AI), and to encourage reflection on when and how to use it in the teaching and learning process. At the same time, there is an opposing movement towards rejecting technology altogether and returning to fully analogue teaching environments.

These are, of course, two extremes.

My sense is that both approaches are driven by fear. The push for AI integration is often motivated by concerns that students will otherwise be unprepared for the labour market. Conversely, the move toward device-free classrooms is driven by the fear that technology enables cheating and encourages students to take shortcuts in their learning.

So here we are again, acting on fear, giving in to pressure, and losing track of what is important in our work, and of what universities are here for. Not least because we don’t have (or make) the time to stop for a second and think.

This creates a real challenge for educational developers. University policies can pull in conflicting directions, and we are expected to communicate these mixed messages to teaching staff. We are, in effect, asked to support and justify two opposing approaches.

Structured reflection

As usual, the more reasonable path lies somewhere in between these extremes. Rather than adopting one-fits-all recipes, educators need to take the time to engage in reflective decision-making that considers context, goals, and intended learning outcomes. This process can help them decide not just whether an entire course should use technology or be device-free, but how to navigate the nuances that are often overlooked.

One way to support this is through structured reflection. Educators can ask:

• What is the problem we are trying to address?

• Can technology help solve it?

• Could limiting or removing technology be more effective?

• What are the intended learning outcomes of the course, session, or task?

Such prompts or decision trees allow for more flexible and nuanced decisions. Technology use does not need to be uniform across a course; it can vary between sessions or even within a single class. At times, devices may enhance learning; at others, limiting them may support focus and engagement.

Crucially, technology should not be treated as an end in itself. Its use—or restriction—should always serve pedagogical goals. Choosing the suitable modality requires returning to the fundamentals of course design: what we want students to learn and how they can best achieve those outcomes. How can we ensure meaningful learning is happening in the classroom? It requires resisting the urge to default to extremes.

Engaging students in these decisions is also essential. Discussions about AI use, device policies, and classroom expectations should take place openly, ideally from the start of a course. You can take this even a step further and design some co-creation sessions, whereby teachers and students design their own rules of engagement.

Adopting a policy can sometimes seem to be the easier route, allowing people to defer responsibility. While this nuanced approach requires more time and effort than simple yes-or-no policies, it encourages more intentional course design. It also preserves the agency of educators and students to shape their own learning environments, something that I consider extremely important.

The grey zones

If you’ve been reading the past two issues on slow learning and on patience and perseverance, you may think that the analogue classroom goes right down my alley. However, having thought about it quite a bit in the past weeks, I prefer to position myself in the grey zone here. This is mainly because I strongly believe that banning devices does not eliminate the issue (whatever that might be), or it eliminates it only temporarily. If we want to support students in developing certain skills, we need to do it intentionally, through course and task design, not by conditioning their classroom experience. And here I mean either by forcing them to use AI or by forcing them to switch of their devices. These are equally counterproductive, in my opinion.

If we want genuine engagement in learning, we need to ask deeper questions: What is the problem? Why do we use technology (if we do)? Why do we want to ban devices? Is it because students are distracted, because they are unprepared or because they might use AI tools like ChatGPT instead of talking to each other in class? Even then, banning devices might not solve the problem. Students could still use AI beforehand, print the results, and bring them to class. We also need to take into account accessibility issues (for some students technology is the only way to access educational materials) and environmental considerations, although I am wondering how printing more in an analogue environment compares to prompting ChatGPT in class for every question you are asked.

And if it doesn’t need to be black or white, then let’s create our grey zones:

• choose parts of the course (modules or tasks) where you specifically use a certain technology tool and some where you ask students to work device-free. You can decide based on what you want the students to get from the respective activity. In my course, students use mind maps on Mural for several sessions, and I have one session where they work in an analogue way, on a different type of task.

• universities could design some device-free environments (like some cafes have laptop-free sections), where students and staff can socialise and stay away from their screens. While this is not directly linked to education, the broader environment in which we work and learn is very important in shaping the way we think and connect to others.

• even when we decide against going analogue in our classrooms (as we see technology bringing obvious efficiency gains), it is still worth intentionally supporting students with skills such as (hand-written) note-taking, analytical thinking, coming up with good questions or reflection. Believe me, even if they don’t know it yet, they will thank you for it.

Ultimately, the challenge is to navigate this complex landscape shaped not only by pedagogy, but also by institutional pressures, political considerations, and commercial interests in educational technology. The key is to avoid falling into extremes, while still supporting educators’ and students’ autonomy and encouraging reflective, context-sensitive decision-making.

It is not an easy task, but it is one we will need to actively engage with in the near future.

Resources

(I included here only resources on device-free classrooms. You can find some resources on the use of AI in one of my previous newsletters.)

Tech-Lite Classroom Policies, from Cornell University

The Cornell Note Taking System

Technology Restrictions in Courses: Impacts on Student Accessibility, from University of Waterloo

Glass, A. L., & Kang, M. (2019). Dividing attention in the classroom reduces exam performance. Educational Psychology, 39(3), 395–408. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2018.1489046

Hall, A.C.G., Lineweaver, T.T., Hogan, E.E, O’Brien, S.W. (2020): On or off task: The negative influence of laptops on neighboring students’ learning depends on how they are used. Computers & Education, 153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.103901

Quesenberry, K.A. (2022). Engaging the Disengaged: Implementing a No-Tech Policy After Years of Adding Tech to the Classroom. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 77(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/10776958221106020

Pérez-Juárez, M.Á., González-Ortega, D., Aguiar-Pérez, J.M. (2023). Digital Distractions from the Point of View of Higher Education Students. Sustainability, 15, 6044. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15076044

Think back to a time when you learned something new- a sport, playing an instrument, a craft, a language… Did you learn it in one go? Or did it take time? Did it all go smoothly from the beginning until you mastered it? And if not, what made you stick to it despite the obstacles?

Now think of something you wanted to learn, but you gave up too soon. We all have many such examples, I am sure. These days we are exposed to so many things, tempted to try them, but we more often than not realise that we can’t put the necessary time and effort into them or that we lose interest quickly. I myself have tried so many different crafts in the past years, from jewellery making to pottery and cyanotype. I have a cupboard full of materials for each of them, and yet, sadly, I don’t find myself practicing these things very often. We could easily blame this on the lack of time, but, upon reflection, I realised it’s more than that. It has to do with intrinsic motivation and interest, the joy of the experience, but also with patience and perseverance (of which I can confess to very much still training the former). It’s about putting in the time, regularly, experimenting, sticking with it when the novelty wears off and when things don’t turn out as we expect or we don’t see immediate results.

Learning is not always fun, or pleasant, or easy. Genuine learning often stems from difficulty. But we tend to protect our students by eliminating these difficulties and creating a frictionless learning environment. We hardly realise what a great disservice we do them by keeping them in a bubble. A learning experience can be rich and effective even when it is not (necessarily) fun or easy.

Having access to information does not automatically translate into learning. Simply seeing or hearing something does not mean you register it consciously and, even less, that it becomes a source of learning. Exploring the depths of any subject takes time and patience. It’s all about the journey, the process.

Even though it might sound counterintuitive, especially in this day and age, intentional delays can be productive; they help us resist acting on instinct, and instead create a space for us to think before acting or reacting. It is in this reflective space- that may seem empty and silent, even boring- that imagination, creativity and learning can flourish. As Jason Farman eloquently puts it in his book “Delayed Response. The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World”, “Waiting isn’t an in-between time. Waiting, as represented by silences, gaps, and distance, allows us the capacity to imagine that which does not yet exist.”

Reframing patience

But how do we put this perspective of learning across to students and teachers? How can we plead for slow, patient learning, for facing difficulties rather than changing course or taking shortcuts, in a world that seems to be moving faster and faster? How can we demand patience when we are always a click away from an answer?

And yet. Maybe we can reclaim patience by giving it a new meaning to suit our times. Maybe by intentionally training our patience we learn how to control the temporal dimension of our learning, which in turn can open the door of perception and creativity and give depth to learning. No immediate result does not mean failure. Following all the steps of a process is not a waste of time. Silence can be a fertile ground for reflection. Patience is imposing our own rhythm over the rhythm of the world, not by ignoring it but by taming it with discipline and purpose.

Training patience

How can we put all these ideas into practice? There are many ways in which we can tweak our curricula and syllabi to help students develop patience as a skill and as a habit. These, however, often come in contradiction with the idea of cramming as much content as possible into a course. So we need to be mindful that course and curriculum (re)design needs to be accompanied by a shift in mindset.

Here are just some ideas to get you started:

Structure & rhythm

• Support spaced learning: think about how you organise the topics in your course and how you design and structure the learning activities and assignments. Make sure they are well spread over time, giving students a chance to pause and then come back to a topic. The breaks between the learning sessions are very valuable, so try to get this message across as clearly as possible and, when possible, help students plan their learning effectively rather than cramming before the exam;

• Focus more on providing formative feedback instead of linking a grade to each assignment; there will surely be resistance from students but it can also be a learning moment whereby they can internalise the idea that a course is a journey and along the way one can get different types of rewards, equally valuable; a grade is just one of them;

• Create intentional time and space for practice and reflection in the classroom. Whether it is about applying a new concept or training a new skill, design the class time (and the syllabus) in such a way that students have dedicated time to experiment, practice and reflect on how it’s going. Communicate this explicitly to them. In time they will hopefully start making time for this themselves in their routines.

Learning activities

• Design a learning activity as an experiment, with several steps students need to follow. There is no immediate result to each step, but students need to record their findings and reflect on them (they can use a diary or a portfolio, analogue or digital). This can go over several sessions/ weeks and can take place inside and outside the classroom. It is only after going through all the steps that “the answer” or a result is revealed (and this may still be “no result”). A long term project/ activity can help train patience and also understand its value. You can decide at which stage(s) you provide formative feedback;

• Try delaying feedback- intentionally. This may sound like bad practice, but bear with me for a moment. Timely feedback is very important. But how many times have you- as a teacher or student- felt pressured to give immediate feedback to a presentation, for instance, and found that you could not come up with the most useful ideas on the spot? You only realised later on that you could have provided far richer feedback had you had the time. So why don’t we give ourselves this time? Let there be a moment of silence after the presentations, allow for non-verbal reactions (from teacher & peers), and take time to formulate feedback the following day, for instance, in a written form. This can also apply for peer feedback, students can then write their comments, thoughts and questions in an online forum, or discuss them in the next class.

How about perseverance?

Perseverance goes a step further from patience. It is all about continuing despite difficulty. Not giving up at the first obstacle. Learning, adapting, pushing through. For some it comes naturally, while others have to learn it. We often learn it by going through tough times.

In the past years the concepts of “resilience” and “grit” have become more present in the Higher Education discourse (and no only). While in some aspects they overlap with perseverance, there are some nuances that set them apart. While grit can be defined as passion + perseverance (pursuing your goals despite setbacks), resilience emphasises adaptability and flexibility that allow us to effectively cope with stress and challenges. There is perseverance in there too, but more as determination to adapt to shifting circumstances, rather than single-mindedly not giving up on your goal, as in the case of grit.

I find all these three concepts very useful and relevant for our students nowadays, so perhaps we could start by openly talking to them about their meaning and value for learning but also for personal and professional life. Obstacles can take many shapes, such as dissent (different opinions, sometimes completely opposing your own), dissonance (holding diverging ideas that can create internal friction), delay (things taking longer than expected) or failure (not reaching the desired outcome). By helping students to learn how to deal with these obstacles in a productive way, we support them in training their perseverance and resilience.

We could do that by letting go of the idea that learning needs to be smooth and by intentionally introducing points of friction in the learning experience. This could be: exposing students to different perspectives and opinions, asking them to play devil’s advocate, adding some unexpected obstacles in a project or experiment (by design; in some cases, though, these happen naturally, without our intervention). Don’t forget to explicitly talk to students about why you choose this approach and debrief with them afterwards, to make sure they internalise the value.

Another way to target both perseverance and resilience is by openly talking about failure and reframing it into a source of learning. This can be very powerful and can contribute to a mindset shift students will be grateful for long after thy leave university.

Bonus: The other two Ps

When thinking about patience and perseverance, two other Ps naturally come to mind: practice and presence. Every day when I walk to work I pass by the Conservatorium and I hear students practice various instruments, as well as their voice. Hearing this cacophony of sounds embodies for me the idea of practice, of discipline, of working towards something, while accepting you are not there yet (and it may still take some time). It’s humbling and inspiring.

As I myself very much still work on my patience, I find attention and mindfulness, as forms of presence, really useful and grounding. Being fully present in or surroundings, understanding the rhythm of nature (where everything takes time), paying attention to those around us- these can be small things that, once turned into habit, can make a huge difference. At least for me they do.

Resources

The Secret to Success? Mastering the Art of Patience, by Brad Stulberg

Jennifer L. Roberts on the importance of patience in practice (video)

The development of the student online learning patience scale (SOLPS), by Ali Eryilmaz & Ahmet Basal

Building Student Learning Perseverance (podcast)

Just imagine this…

Walk into the classroom.
Give students pens and paper. No, they most likely won't have their own. Who owns analogue tools anymore? Tell them this is a device-free moment. You will get some eyes rolling, but eventually everyone will close their laptops and put their phones away.
Ask them to work individually on a task for 10 minutes. It can be anything- more or less- related to the topic of your course. Something without a quick answer they can just look up. Something that requires some deep(er) thinking and connection-making.
All they need to do is sit in silence, think and (hand)write. Yet, this seems to be so much more difficult than any other task we could give them.
Count until they get bored and start fidgeting, talking to each other or desperately waiting to scroll on their phone.
If you're lucky, you reach 5 minutes.
Sad but true.

The problem

Education has become so transactional.

We are all bombarded with so many stimuli and conditioned to act and respond fast, swiftly moving from task to task. Unconsciously, we internalise the efficiency mantra we keep hearing these days.

The result? We begin to see thinking as a luxury. There is so much “noise” that we cannot hear our thoughts anymore. Students hardly see the value of deep thinking either. They lose patience easily. They seek fast rewards. They demand immediate answers, feedback, grades. They take shortcuts. All with the aim of achieving goals quicker.

But what if the goal was the way? What if they realised that by slowing down and taking each step mindfully they gain more than by rushing through the process?

All they need is guidance and space to practice deep thinking, instead of constantly focusing on task after task, losing track of the bigger picture. Yet, most courses don't explicitly provide that, for fear of falling behind on content (oh, the Holy Content!). So here are some ideas on how we can embed such moments in an effective way; it often takes just a small tweak into what we are already doing- different tools, a slightly modified task, a changed environment or setting. And, of course, reflection and open discussion, to close the loop.

The truth about learning

The scenario above is from a course I was teaching last semester, a skills course where students had to work on new competencies and reflect on the process. I was quite taken aback, I must say, to observe students’ reactions. To see how uncomfortable they were with silence. How new the idea of “just sitting and thinking” was to them. How unfamiliar they found the idea of handwriting.

I kept thinking that, if this is the case, we are doing something wrong. We are missing the point, and as a result, they are missing the point. Alas, all we hear around us these days is how to train students to make better use of GenAI. I felt a huge dissonance. I was almost violently pushed back into thinking what really matters, as we go about the daily business of shaping young minds. We keep rushing to try to keep the pace with overcrowded curricula, overzealous assessment strategies, rigid accreditation criteria, new and intrusive technologies, a raging world… And we often feel like we are getting nowhere. We are somehow always behind.

But what if we could take back control and set our own rhythm? Not chasing external factors but focusing on what should, in fact, take place in our classroom. Focusing on learning. Slow, patient learning.

These days, this is an act of resistance. Are we up for it?

We can start by acknowledging, together with our students, that learning takes time, and that’s ok. Everyone learns at their own pace, some topics are more complex and take longer to process, some skills take a lot of practice. Learning takes patience.

Then, I feel we need to talk more- with students and with colleagues- about learning as a process, instead of focusing so much on the end products (exams, papers, presentations, etc).

For me slow learning involves:

• Focused reading: reading to understand (as opposed to reading to answer a question in the exam), to absorb ideas, enrich your vocabulary, access other minds and worlds; something you can never get from an automatically generated summary;

• Deep thinking: going beyond quick answers, making connections, nurturing new ideas, testing them, reflecting, letting your mind wander and bringing it back- think of it as sending your mind to the gym- doing it regularly and creating a habit of it really pays off;

• Meaningful conversations: practicing active listening, exchanging ideas freely but always respectfully, building and supporting an argument; co-constructing ideas;

• Cultivating attention: being intentional about where you direct your attention, actively turning away from distractions, noticing your surroundings and yourself, being fully present with whatever you are doing.

For how many of these do you currently make space in your classroom in an explicit way?

Re-thinking the environment

For all of the above to take place, we need to reconsider both our learning environment and our learning design. Let’s first turn to the learning environment. This is something we so often take for granted, ignoring the fact that we can actively shape it.

Slow learning starts by reclaiming time and space. This may include rethinking the way our physical classrooms look like (especially if we are lucky to have flexible furniture), using virtual spaces intentionally when they bring added value, or even taking our students to more unconventional learning spaces- outdoors on a sunny spring day, walking or on a study visit. This spatial element, though often overlooked, has a very important role in rewiring our brains and helping us learn.

Another way to claim space, mental space this time, is to try to reduce distractions. I am not suggesting we entirely ban digital devices from our classrooms (though in some cases this may actually work). I am thinking more in terms of embedding device-free moments in our classes- moments where the focus is on deep thinking or connecting with peers, not looking for answers. The added benefit is that students can use these moments to practice working with analogue tools like pen and paper, an aspect almost forgotten, despite the proven cognitive benefits.

Last but not least, slowly moving into learning design, it’s important to provide students with some tangible incentives to play along (at last until it hopefully becomes a habit). Rethinking assessment and especially the use of grading to de-centre immediate rewards can be a starting point. I find this extremely difficult, as it really means breaking the vicious circle, but we have to start somewhere. And of course, we need to be honest, communicate this explicitly to students and trying, through sustained practice and reflection, to get them to a point where the benefits become obvious to them.

Slow learning in practice

The good news is that we can start small. We don’t have to change our whole syllabus to include moments of slow learning. We can build in small elements, see if/ how they work, adjust, and try again. In the end it’s more about changing the rhythm, sometimes the medium or the environment, end eventually, hopefully, the mindset.

Here are some ideas you might want to try, to support…

• …reading:

  • scaffolding reading tasks with questions and meaning-making exercises; this can easily be done in an online asynchronous mode, using the discussion board of a VLE for instance;

  • annotation- digital or analogue, individual or in pairs/ small groups, in class or in preparation for class;

  • note-taking: opportunities to practice the skill of capturing the essence of a text in your own words; always more effective when handwritten;

• …thinking

  • making connections: have students draw mind-maps of specific concepts they are learning; you can provide templates for them to fill in (to avoid the black page); pen & paper & device-free works best as they cannot simply look-up and copy-paste the answers without thinking;

  • reflection: embed short reflective moments or assignments; they can be more structured or rather informal, individual or collective- you can find some ideas here;

  • creativity: break the pattern, try something new, have students play around with the ideas & concepts in new ways; all you need is some large pieces of paper, colourful pens & markers and post-its.

• …conversation

  • active listening exercises: have students talk to each other, in a device-free environment, and then use the information retrieved through conversation in another activity;

  • "Yes, and ..." and "No, but ..." techniques, used in improvisational comedy, to train the skill of refining and challenging ideas in a constructive manner;

• …attention

  • treasure hunt: ask your students to collect/ record various pieces of information on the topic of next week’s class; they can be snippets of conversation they hear, videos, podcasts, newspaper articles… This will make them receptive to the topic and their findings can enrich the class discussion;

  • attention monitoring: ask students to make a chart (in whatever form they want) to record they attention levels at certain moments in class. Ask them to do it for a few weeks and then reflect on it. If you think it’s useful, have a class discussion on this topic.

  • more tips to cultivate attention here.

Regardless of which slow learning moment you choose and how you embed it in your class, the most important thing is that it provides students with an opportunity to slow down, enjoy silence, put away their digital devices for a bit, be in tune with their thoughts and with each other and practice patience. In a few years they will thank you for it. Because this will not only improve learning but will eventually have a positive impact on our life and our students’ lives.

Resources

Ness Letters: Cognitive Luxuries: interesting blog written by Anne-Laure Le Cunff (I recommend subscribing to her newsletter); this post is about cultivating spaciousness, agency and depth in our thinking;

Ness Letters: Analog Renaissance: same blog, this time an insightful article about how to bring back the analogue to parts of our life;

An Introduction to Slow Thinking Pedagogy: another one to subscribe to- Lily Abadal’s blog “Wisdom in th Machine Age” is full of ideas on how to implement slow learning in the classroom- all tried and tested by her;

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman: a book that explains the two systems that drive the way we think: System 1- fast, intuitive & emotional and System- slower, more deliberative and more logical;

Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning, by Charlotte Hu: some evidence on the benefits of handwriting for learning;

“Give me a break!” A systematic review and meta-analysis on the efficacy of micro-breaks for increasing well-being and performance: some evidence on positive of small breaks;

What is “Yutori”: learn more about the Japanese concept of “spaciousness” or “room to breathe”.

Ten years ago, when I was doing my PhD on technology-enhanced learning (TEL), talking about technology with teachers was more about trying to convince them that some digital tools might be useful in their courses. Many responses pointed out using Power Point as “innovative” practice, and I even heard teachers proudly resisting Power Point. Times have changed. Quite radically. Or have they?

The Covid-19 pandemic rapidly exposed many to ways of teaching and learning they had never imagined. Some learned from this experience, some tried to resist by using technology minimally, while others used it as a means to uphold their pedagogical principles, despite the crisis. Universities reverted to in-classroom mode as soon as they could. But little time passed until technology stroke again. This time, seemingly, shaking up the discourse relentlessly till the present day.

Talking to several educational developer friends lately, it turns out all faculty want to know about now is related to the use of GenAI (ok maybe it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but this is the general vibe). To attract attention, professional development opportunities need to have “AI” in their title. I am not saying that we should ignore the topic (we couldn’t even if we wanted to). What makes me sad is that topics like course design or assessment, key to quality education, are losing traction as the GenAI hype is dominating the discourse. Its ubiquity, the fact that literally all the digital environments we visit insistently invite us to use AI does not help in keeping things balanced. Funnily enough, trying to resist the hype could get you labelled as a new Luddite- not very far off from how I perceived those who resisted Power Point a decade ago. Times are changing, new tools capture the attention and imagination, while educational principles unfortunately often end up on the back burner.

We don’t need to keep hearing how the world as we know it will be shaken and transformed beyond recognition.

We don’t need more chatbots that will soon lose their appeal and be forgotten.

We need time to stop and think, resist the false sense of urgency and go back to the roots. How does learning happen? How can we support it?

The illusion of connection

I believe education is about PEOPLE.

That’s essentially why I will zoom in on the relational aspects of using GenAI in the classroom, leaving out many of the other important aspects discussed at length in some of the resources below and beyond.

Building a chatbot for your course seems pretty popular right now. While some find this fun, for me it feels like an upgraded version of “talking to the hand”. Human interaction (student-teacher and student-student) is a crucial part of learning. Using GenAI to outsource routine tasks should, in my view, only provide us with more quality time to interact with our students, to be there for them, to help them unleash their creativity. This is exactly what I would *not* trust a chatbot with. I want to see my students collaborate, challenge and build on each other’s ideas. I want to see teachers get inspiration from each other. This relational side of education is what I consider to be the most valuable.

In the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) environment we have at Maastricht University, collaborative learning plays a crucial role, as students work together to solve real-life problems. Learning depends on everyone’s preparation and willingness to collaborate. It’s often not about finding the right answer but constructively building knowledge together. I am not saying GenAI does not (or should not) play a role in this model, but I am convinced it cannot replace the human aspect of collaboration. I see it in the classroom, when students don’t use their devices and instead work on cases together. The disagreements and debates where they train their argumentation skills. The “aha moment” when everything clicks. I also see it when teachers come together to share their experiences, or when they co-teach and design a course together. This spark of inspiration is nothing like the transactional relation we have with a machine, no matter how convenient and time-saving it may appear.

In the discourse on using GenAI we often hear about the principle of “keeping the human in the loop”. Very important, everyone would agree. But this is becoming more difficult to put into practice. For me, this is not only about double checking AI output, but also trying to get input from other, non-AI sources. And this is increasingly becoming “the extra mile” many are not willing to go, once they got their quick answers. After all, ChatGPT is always there, while colleagues and friends also have a life beside waiting for your questions and answering them on the spot.

In an ideal world, human collaboration and human-AI collaboration would not exclude but complement each other. However, the ubiquity of AI and its ease of access transform it into a seemingly viable and acceptable replacement. The illusion of connection. Something to be mindful of.

What is at stake?

As the end of the year is usually a good time to take stock of our practices, I propose an exercise whereby we honestly look at how the use of GenAI impacts students’ and teachers’ relation with one another and, through this, their learning potential. The idea is to get a clearer understanding of what we get vs what we miss when we favour human-AI interaction to human-human interaction, both as students and as teachers. This analysis can hopefully help us focus on what matters, and turn to each other more often.

Below I will offer my personal assessment of the current situation, so I acknowledge my bias, as I already mentioned I value the relational aspect of education highly. You can do this exercise too, also for other aspects where AI use has an impact. If anything, it can provide clarity and a starting point for intentional engagement with GenAI.

For students

What they get:

• A sense of collaboration and peer learning. This is often an illusion. The relation you have with a chatbot is hierarchical (it does what you tell it to do, essentially), so this is far from the genuine collaboration between two peers, with its back and forths, pushbacks and constructive disagreements; it’s in this unpredictable space of human interaction that learning happens;

• Validation for their ideas. However, because of the nature of the exchange, this is short lived and never as satisfying, in the long run, as validation from a peer or a teacher.

What they miss:

• Learning through social interaction. I strongly believe that looking for answers and debating them with peers, collaboratively is a process that can and should not be replaced or cut short by human-machine interaction. While on the face of it the result may be similar, it lacks the depth and rootedness that learning needs.

• Friction and resistance. Deep learning does not (only) need a “yay sayer”, it needs a critical voice that can help you build an argument, something that happens naturally in human interactions.

For teachers

What we get:

• Generic learning designs and teaching tips. While these can do the trick when we are busy and have no one to turn to and no time to read educational literature (false sense of efficiency), using them (exclusively) can lead to a monotonous, linear learning experience, less likely to engage your students;

• The feeling we are “innovating”. But using a chatbot to outsource some of our interactions with -and among- students, when your course does not really need it or lends itself to it, is just a gimmick. Real innovation would be doing something that really benefits your students, be it with technology or without it.

What we miss:

• A sense of community and a sense of being supported. This does not only mean quick answers (to complex questions). It means being rooted in a community of thought and practice, it means empathy, emotional support, practical support, inspiration.

• A shared space to exchange, experiment, fail, learn, and try again. As educational developers, we have been working hard trying to build these spaces and it sad to see that the promise of convenience might drive teachers away from them.

Human interactions can be messy, but it can also be very enriching. Its unpredictable, sometimes unreliable. Often confronting. It can be fun but it can also be enraging. We need all these emotions for learning, for growing as human being and as professionals. Please remember this the next time someone tell you the most important skill in your next job will be the use of AI.

I’ve been studying and working with the use of technology in education for almost two decades. In principle, I’m all for it, although I know it may not seem so from this post. But not at the expense of human connection. Technology has the potential to connect us. That’s why it’s so sad to see it now as the vehicle of our isolation (and worse, choice for isolation).

*this post is the result of some very nice conversations with friends and colleagues (you know who you are), that helped me put my thoughts down, despite my reluctance to write on this topic. I would never trade that with bouncing ideas with a (ro)bot. Sorry not sorry.

Resources

Human Literacy, by Eryk Salvaggio

The future of AI and education: Some cautionary notes, by Neil Selwyn

Critical Studies of Artificial Intelligence and Education: Putting a Stake in the Ground

The Manifesto for Teaching and Learning in a Time of Generative AI: A Critical Collective Stance to Better Navigate the Future

Promoting and protecting teacher agency in the age of artificial intelligence, position paper by the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030

Machine teaching? Teachers’ professional agency in the age of algorithmic tools in education, by Tobias Röhl

“Don’t Forget the Teachers”: Towards an Educator-Centered Understanding of Harms from Large Language Models in Education, by Emma Harvey, Allison Koenecke & Rene F. Kizilcec

When the prompting stops: exploring teachers’ work around the educational frailties of generative AI tools, by Neil Selwyn, Marita Ljungqvist & Anders Sonesson

What does current genAI actually mean for student learning?, by Dan L. Dinsmore & Luke K. Fryer

Challenging The Myths of Generative AI, by Eryk Salvaggio

Against Generative AI- a great continuously updated collection of critical resources curated by Cate Denial

Ever sent out course evaluation forms and wondered: “Why do we have to do this, nothing happens anyway with the data?” At FHML (Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences) at Maastricht University, evaluations aren’t just data, they’re a part of a bigger conversation on quality, development, and collaboration. In this post we describe what works for us and we hope some of these ideas will resonate with you in your contexts as well.

1. Be clear on why you’re evaluating

Your why shapes everything, from participation to impact. Before starting with crafting a new evaluation, ask yourself: What’s the purpose here? If the answer is ‘because we’ve always done it’, stop and rethink. Knowing your why will determine what you ask, how often you ask, and how you use the results. Without this clarity, you risk collecting data you’ll never act on.

Is the purpose of SET (Student Evaluation of Teaching) to gather feedback for accrediting courses, improving quality, or recognizing teaching excellence? FHML uses evaluations both for improvement and accountability purposes, aligned with the plan-do-check-act cycle, although the main focus is on improvement and providing rich feedback.

Tip: Define and clearly communicate the purpose of evaluations to everyone from students to teachers and policy makers and make sure that improvement is at the centre to foster trust and engagement.

2. Ground your evaluations in educational theories

Evaluations are most valuable when they are grounded in the same educational theories that inform curriculum design. For instance, if a program is built on principles of self-directed learning, the evaluation should ask questions that capture how well teaching, assessment, and learning activities align with these principles. Drawing on theory helps ensure that feedback is not about surface-level satisfaction but about deeper aspects of learning, motivation, and engagement.

At FHML, a working group of educational psychologists contributes to this process by ensuring that questions are consistent with educational goals and provide data that can meaningfully inform program improvement.

Tip: Ground your evaluation in the educational theories that inform curriculum design to go beyond surface-level satisfaction.

3. Think beyond surveys

SET is often default to online questionnaires, but they’re just one piece of the puzzle. Consider surveys for gathering broad input, focus groups with teachers for richer qualitative insights, and student panels for deep and ongoing, topic-focused dialogue. In surveys, scaffold questions toward gaining rich insights, not just rating and encourage commentary like: What’s one thing we could change to make the course better?, but make sure that open-ended questions remain in balance with Likert-type items. If possible, ask for help from experts for item and question construction. Targeted sampling, where different groups of students or teachers are invited to evaluate different courses, helps reduce evaluation fatigue and increases the quality of responses.

At FHML we often complement standard online surveys with additional questions tailored to course content or to issues previously raised by students. In addition, we organize focus group interviews and involve students in major decisions about the curriculum. Although this approach is time-consuming, it strengthens students’ sense of responsibility and connection to the program while also makes the curriculum and teaching more responsive and adaptable to students’ needs.

Tip: Combine general surveys with other sources of information, such as focus groups, as each method has its strengths. Scaffold questions to encourage richer insights, and when possible, seek expert support in constructing evaluations.

4. Time it right

Timing determines reach and relevance. The best-designed evaluation is useless if nobody fills it in or participates in focus group interviews. Therefore, avoid asking for evaluation weeks after the course ends, but try capturing feedback during the last teaching session or right after the final assessment.

At FHML we encourage feedback gathering during the final tutorials/classes and don’t postpone it until the exams. Exams, on the other hand, are evaluated by the student evaluation panels. Informal, in-class mini evaluations (“1-minute feedback”) also help faculty stay in tune throughout the teaching period.

Tip: Schedule evaluation moments when students are present and focused to maximize response rate and thereby the information captured by the evaluation.

5. Close the loop to your respondents

This is the most common failing: students give feedback, and then… silence. Therefore, share what you heard or received as feedback and what you’re changing. Fact sheets, course newsletters, or short videos can work wonders. Taking notes during verbal feedback shows students they’ve been heard and increases their willingness for participation in the evaluation process. Even if you can’t act on a suggestion, explain why.

Visible follow-up builds trust and boosts future response rates. At FHML students have access to the evaluation reports of all courses they ever participated at, and teachers are encouraged to start their first lesson by introducing the changes they have made since last year based on students’ feedback.

Tip: Share outcomes in digestible formats (infographics, summaries, videos). If something can’t change, explain why. Every voice deserves acknowledgment.

6. Decide who’s responsible

Somebody needs to own each step: designing the evaluation, collecting responses, analysing data, and following up. If responsibility is fuzzy, the process will stall.

At FHML student evaluations are part of the quality assurance cycle, and monitoring and handling each step in the process has their own responsible person or (working) group.

Tip: Assign the different phases of the evaluation cycle to people or working groups to build ownership and responsibility.

7. Navigate the emotional terrain

Evaluations can trigger strong reactions for both students and teachers. Therefore, it is crucial to create a safe climate for honest feedback (clear privacy policies help) and to encourage respectful language: feedback should be serious and actionable. Let students see that teachers are also vulnerable human beings, and how the formulation of their feedback creates an impact. Share results in ways that promote dialogue, not defensiveness, and if possible, focus on narrative feedback over single “teacher score” metrics.

Honest feedback can feel vulnerable for students and teachers alike. Handle it with empathy. Build a respectful feedback culture: anonymous when appropriate, but transparent about use. FHML frames evaluation as collaborative improvement and is very careful when it comes to judgmental performance review.

Tip: Take care of emotions in feedback: share successes, invite reflection, and name the human effort behind teaching. Put an effort into teaching students how they can provide constructive and actionable feedback.

8. From evaluation to quality culture

SET works best as part of a broader, continuous quality loop, not a standalone formality. At FHML, SET feeds into a structured quality assurance process involving teachers, students, and policy makers. General course evaluation questionnaires are often complemented with course specific questions, tutor and/or teacher evaluations, and in-depth dialogue sessions around the evaluative data, where teachers and learners co-shape educational improvements.

Tip: Design a system of quality assurance to be more than data collection, link it to dialogue sessions, action planning, and regular follow-through.

Takeaway

Student evaluations are not an end in themselves. They’re a tool for dialogue, reflection, and improvement. The magic happens when they’re integrated into a broader quality culture, supported by multiple data sources, and fed back to students in transparent, actionable ways. When done well, SET doesn’t just measure teaching, but they help grow it.

Considerations for designing meaningful SETs

1. Define and clearly communicate the purpose of evaluations to everyone from students to teachers and policy makers and make sure that improvement is at the centre to foster trust and engagement.

2. Ground your evaluation in the educational theories that inform curriculum design to go beyond surface-level satisfaction.

3. Combine general surveys with other sources of information, such as focus groups, as each method has its strengths. Scaffold questions to encourage richer insights, and when possible, seek expert support in constructing evaluations.

4. Schedule evaluation moments when students are present and focused to maximize response rate and thereby the information captured by the evaluation.

5. Share outcomes in digestible formats (infographics, summaries, videos). If something can’t change, explain why. Every voice deserves acknowledgment.

6. Assign the different phases of the evaluation cycle to people or working groups to build ownership and responsibility.

7. Take care of emotions in feedback: share successes, invite reflection, and name the human effort behind teaching. Put an effort into teaching students how they can provide constructive and actionable feedback.

8. Design a system of quality assurance to be more than data collection, link it to dialogue sessions, action planning, and regular follow-through.

Resources

• Roxå, Torgny, Arshad Ahmad, Janette Barrington, John Van Maaren, and Robert Cassidy. 2022. “Reconceptualizing Student Ratings of Teaching to Support Quality Discourse on Student Learning: A Systems Perspective.” Higher Education 83 (1): 35–55;

• Stalmeijer, Renée E., Jill R.D. Whittingham, Guy W.G. Bendermacher, Ineke H.A.P. Wolfhagen, Diana H.J.M.Dolmans, and Carolin Sehlbach. 2023. “Continuous Enhancement of Educational Quality–Fostering a Quality Culture: AMEE Guide No. 147.”- the AMEE guide about Continuous Enhancement of Educational Quality;

• Renée Stalmeijer, Jill Whittingham, Willem de Grave & Diana Dolmans (2016) Strengthening internal quality assurance processes: facilitating student evaluation committees to contribute, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41:1, 53-66 - a paper about student evaluation committees, as reference regarding ‘ think beyond surveys’;

• D. H. J. M., & Ginns, P. (2005). A short questionnaire to evaluate the effectiveness of tutors in PBL: validity and reliability. Medical Teacher, 27(6), 534–538- a paper about the evaluation questionnaire;

• A tool created by Niels for supporting teachers in creating their course-specific questions: https://maastrichteducation.fra1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bw939Kl7mbyqqp0

Gabriella Tisza, PhD is an educational psychologist and an assistant professor at Maastricht University, where she works within the Taskforce Programme Evaluation on ensuring the educational quality of the Bachelor of Medicine program. In parallel, within the School of Health Professions Education, she conducts research on the responsible integration of technology and artificial intelligence in education, aiming to support the meaningful use of technology in learning activities. Before joining Maastricht University, she completed her PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology, where she investigated the role of fun in learning, particularly within STEM education. Her research combined insights from psychology, education, technology, and data analysis to develop a model explaining how enjoyment contributes to learning outcomes.

Dr. Niels van der Baan obtained his PhD at the Department of Educational Research and Development at the School of Business and Economics (SBE) at Maastricht University. His research interests include coaching and reflection for lifelong learning. Currently, he works as an Assistant Professor and a member of the taskforce Programme Evaluation at the Department of Educational Development and Research at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) at the same university, where he also teaches in the Bachelor Health Sciences and the Master of Health Professions Education (MHPE). If you are interested in knowing more, you can contact Niels via email at n.vanderbaan@maastrichtuniversity.nl or on LinkedIn.

Self-management for academics: why and what

As the initial buzz of the new Academic Year is slowly subsiding, we start looking at our agendas and all too often a sense of gloom replaces the initial enthusiasm. Despite looking forward to meeting the new students and working on new projects, it feels like soon enough we will be buried in so many tasks we’ll hardly have time to leisurely meet a colleague over coffee (this happened to me, as we realised our next joint availability was in December!) or fully enjoy a weekend without teaching preparation or catching up on writing.

And still, ironically, when I looked for resources on self-management in academia, I mainly came across resources for students. This is a skill our students most definitely have to train but I strongly believe we- people who work in academia, with different roles- need to seriously think about this as well. It is something we thoroughly (and often happily) ignore until it is too late.

Let’s start with a quick definition, so we’re all on the same page. When I say “self-management” I mean regulating our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours to achieve personal and academic goals. When we unpack this, we can see it touches up things like:

• Time management: Do we spend our time effectively? Do we get to do the aspects of our work that we like? Do we still have spare time?

• Goal setting: What do we want to achieve? What is expected from us? How do we bridge the two?

• Organisation: How do we plan and organise our tasks to make our workload manageable? What choices do we make in terms of tools, habits, etc?

• Emotional regulation: How do we manage stressful situations? How can we stay on top of our frustrations and still love our job?

With a variety of roles and tasks that we have to joggle on a daily basis, it’s obvious why we all need to work on these skills. But with jobs that are rarely “9 to 5”, the lines quickly become blurred. The pressure of finishing a grant application, revising an article, designing a new course or grading hundreds of assignments can easily make any spare time simply vanish. With our batteries low, we make poor decisions, falling deeper into this vicious spiral. And it’s not only the external demands. We are very often our harshest critic. We’re never “enough”. We need to grow, to continuously develop. It’s in our DNA.

Between the external pressures and this nagging inner voice, we hardly find any headspace to critically look at what we are actually doing. And more importantly, why.

Am I a good teacher?

Of all the facets of an academic job, I will dive a bit deeper here into teaching*, mainly because I am involved in it from different angles, teaching students myself but also working with faculty on their teaching. So I will use these two perspectives to show the dilemmas we’re in:

• As teachers:

  We are invested in students’ success and we want to support them the best we can. We prepare our courses well, making sure we stay on top of our topic but also trying out different teaching activities to engage and motivate students. All this takes an important amount of time.

  With large teaching loads and high student numbers, we have to make difficult decisions: do we keep our high standards, often resulting in inhumane workloads both for us and for our students? Or do we cut corners? And if so- where and how?

  What is good enough? This question has a negative connotation for our excellence-oriented selves, but I feel it’s a crucial one to ask. To answer it, we may need to find our own system to measure the quality of education.

  We are treading a very fine line and everyday we need to make important choices in terms of balancing our presence and involvement (teaching) with student agency and engagement (learning).

• As faculty developers:

  We are invested in teachers’ success and want to support them the best we can. So we talk to them about important pedagogical principles (e.g. course design, active learning, assessment) and we also encourage them to find ways to understand and connect with their students.

  Then reality kicks in: large teaching loads, lecture halls packed with students. How on earth can one even start to use those principles in real life? At the end of a workshop on inclusive teaching, one participant shared with me that, while he fully supports the use of inclusive teaching approaches, he simply cannot put them into practice when teaching 6 simultaneous courses, with over 100 students each. He is not even able to learn all the names. It was a cry for help. And it made me aware of the huge limitations our ideas and suggestions have in real life. People are struggling to be good teachers, and often feel like failing if they cannot do everything “by the book”.

  Are we not, unconsciously, adding extra pressure? And if so, how can we recalibrate our approach?

  We need to make our own choices and it comes back to the same question: “what is good enough?". It’s not about lowering standards, it’s about being aware and flexible enough to adjust them to different contexts, without losing confidence.

  Adding more explicit emphasis on self-management skills can help too.

*You can do this exercise with the other parts of your job, like research or grant seeking. What you will get will be a clearer picture of the tensions inherent to your job, between your own values and principles and the reality you need to work with. This is a great starting point to prepare for making some tough choices.

What do you choose?

Figuring out where the tension lies is the first step: it reminds us what we stand for as academics (educators, researchers…) and it provides a useful but painful reality check, making us aware of the constraints we are operating under. Even though it sounds like common sense, all these things are buried in our subconscious, which makes them easier to ignore than to address. What we end up doing is getting better at dealing, over and over, with the consequences of this clash: stress, frustration, sleepless nights, even burnout.

Let’s slow down for a second. Let’s remind ourselves that how we spend our time and how we organise our workload is our choice, though it may not feel like it. Here are some of my thoughts and experiences on regaining control of our academic life:

• Managing our environment: this is about managing time, workload, health, tools- everything that plays a role in our work. Start with small changes and try to create new habits.

  • Time management: try to be intentional about how you spend your time; you can find some ideas here;

  • Workload management: while decreasing our workload is in most cases an illusion, maintaining a clear overview at all times can help us feel more “in control”. More importantly, it helps us prioritise, so that we can direct our energy to whatever matters at a given point in time. An overview also provides us with an opportunity to actively diversify our tasks, which helps with staying motivated, especially in tough times. When designing a course, think about your teacher presence- where and when is it most needed? And what could also be achieved through independent or/and peer learning?

  • Focus on health (physical and mental): this is a no-brainer, and still, one of the areas where we often fail. And that is usually because we fail to address the previous two points. Let’s constantly remind ourselves that if we are not well, physically or/ and mentally, we are not able to reach any of our professional goals. Having mental clarity helps us set goals, design sustainable strategies to achieve them and manage our time and workload effectively. Don’t forget to take a break, meet friends, plan holidays, spend quality time with family.

  • Wise use of tools: nowadays we have so many tools at our disposal, supposedly designed to save us time and make our work more efficient. But are we using them (well)? And if we save time, what do we direct this precious time towards? How do we make it count? Having an overview of our tasks and workload also enables us to decide when and where we can use some help and which tasks require more brain power and creativity. Don’t just use tools because they are fashionable, only use them if and where they make sense for you.

• Using reflection is a powerful way to pace ourselves and try to better understand what drives us and what drains our energy. It is a great way to consistently reconnect with our values and (re)gain motivation. Try to step back every now and then (ideally at regular intervals) and think about where you are in that moment, what you are doing, what challenges you are facing. When overwhelmed, try to see where you can draw the line (yes, that’s a tough one!): what is enough*?

  *Enough to meet you standards but also give you time to breathe.

  Remember: perfect is the enemy of good.

  You can find some ideas for reflection here and more on teaching diaries here.

• Learning to say “no”: a very difficult thing for most of us. And yet, such an important thing to learn and keep practicing. Setting our boundaries is crucial for our well-being and work-life balance. A friend once gave me a usful tip for practicing this: on a post-it write these 4 questions: Why me? Why now? Why this way? Why at all? Every time you get a request, pass it first through the filter of these questions and only say “yes” if it fully makes sense for you at that particular moment.

• Getting a buddy is actually the most important piece of advice I have right now, so if there is one thing you remember from this long article, let it be this one. Relationships matter, so nurture the ones that help you refill your energy. A buddy can join you in your reflection, can bounce ideas with you and is a constant sources of accountability and reassurance.

Just to be clear: I am not against a growth mindset or personal and professional development (hell, that’s the part of my job I love the most!). But I strongly believe growth also means knowing how and where to set our boundaries and managing our (finite) resources effectively.

Ultimately it is a matter of making choices. And we need to make them intentionally, every day, with all the cards on the table.

So, what do you choose?

Resources

A Pedagogy of Kindness: Compassion Toward the Self- webinar recording and resources on self care and kindness by Catherine Denial (you can find many more interesting resources on her website);

Proactive Coping Strategies: Building Resilience and Thriving- a repository of proactive coping strategies;

Four Ways To Fight The ‘Super Teacher’ Myth- narrated presentation in which Jessamyn Neuhaus provides four practical considerations to help you fight the “super teacher” myth;

3- Minute Boundary Builder- boundary-setting exercise, very useful when you feel the pressure to say “yes”;

What We Value and What We Do. This Daily Game of Tic-tac-toe- ideas on how to reflect and act on our values in our day-to-day work and life;

Living into our values- list of values and an insightful exercise by Brené Brown;

Self-Care Awareness: Navigating Triggers in the Classroom- video offering insights on how to identify and manage triggers that can affect your work-life balance and well-being.

A couple of months ago while I was attending the EuroSoTL Conference in Groningen, I suddenly felt nostalgic and after some soul searching I understood why: my journey into education started through SoTL. I am what I am today- an academic highly invested in providing quality education and supporting colleagues in doing so- because about 20 years ago, as a fresh Politics graduate, I became interested in teaching (online, in that specific instance) and started to look closer into the courses I was developing and teaching. This is how I started to meet colleagues from the discipline who were doing the same, and our exchanges and collaborations only fuelled my curiosity. Some of my first publications are SoTL papers about teaching Politics, but beside publications I also fondly remember the many interesting international projects focusing on teaching and curriculum development. All this eventually led to me transitioning to Educational Sciences while also, in parallel, being heavily involved in educational development. A mix I came to treasure and would not want to change, as it provides me with a multi-faceted and always exciting professional experience.

Of course, every story is different. Not everyone who engages with SoTL will eventually leave their initial discipline and become an educationalist. Nor do they have to. The beauty of this SoTL “tribe”, I find, is precisely the diversity. It is essentially educators from various disciplines who share the passion and curiosity for how their students learn. Whether we do it with the aim to publish, to improve our teaching, to facilitate student learning and performance, it’s all about the attitude: going into the classroom with the curiosity and the scholarly mentality that we use in our research.

Why do SoTL?

As an educational developer, I know it’s not easy to get colleagues to engage with SoTL. There are quite a few challenges (more below), both individual and institutional, and the bottom line is: you need a good dose of intrinsic motivation and passion for teaching to even get started. But once you dipped your toes in it, and hopefully had some support to start with, the value of SoTL becomes clear to educators at all stages of their careers.

What’s in it for you as an academic?

SoTL can help you:

• Understand how your students learn- by analysing their engagement patterns, their preferences and performance;

• Explore the effectiveness of your teaching methods and activities- by gathering evidence, going beyond the usual metrics (student evaluations);

• Find answers to some challenges you identify in the classroom- by exploring the learning mechanisms and applying educational theory in the context of your course;

• Better support your students, using the evidence collected in that very context, making it more relevant;

• Connect with peer educators in your discipline and across disciplines- to share experiences, ideas and maybe establish some collaborative endeavours.

Why is the SoTL community important?

Whether or not you have the time and disposition to actively contribute with your own projects, it’s important to acknowledge that the existence of such a community with its research repositories and conferences is an invaluable asset for all educators. I did say “community” but I actually mean “communities”, and the plural form is very relevant as it can help us locate the “tribe” closer to us from different perspectives. There is the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL), the EuroSoTL Network, its European branch and then there are SoTL communities in each discipline. Being part of any such community gives us access to knowledge rooted in teaching practice that can help us unlock challenges we face as teachers and get new ideas to implement in our courses. Also, looking at it from a bird’s eye view, SoTL literature provides valuable knowledge of how learning happens across disciplines.

Challenges

But, as beautiful and useful as it may sound, we need to be aware that there are quite a few challenges that stand in the way of getting engaged in SoTL activities. Here are some of them:

• Not enough time: doing research on your teaching takes extra time: gathering evidence, reading educational theory and analysing the findings in this light, writing up… all takes time and this is one currency that we are struggling to distribute among all the tasks our jobs require;

• Not enough support: like in the case of other teaching- related professional development activities, the level of support from CTLs/ educational developers varies widely and in some cases SoTL falls outside the scope of this support; thus educators are left alone to explore this new territory;

• SoTL not recognised on a par with disciplinary research: an important incentive to go the extra mile with your teaching activity is having your efforts recognised in the context of the yearly appraisals and promotion/ tenure process. While I do notice changes in this respect in the past decades, it is not always the case that SoTL activities and publications have the same weight as the discipline-related ones;

• “Don’t know where to start”: passion and enthusiasm about your teaching are crucial to try out SoTL. But to really succeed you do need to get familiar with educational theory, as a lens that helps you put together the pieces and solve your puzzle. Here is where, without specific support, many of us struggle and eventually give up.

Below I offer some tips on how you, as an educator, can get started with SoTL. But looking at the challenges above, it is clear that there is an institutional dimension to it as well. Support can take the form of advice in terms of literature and theoretical frameworks but also grants and opportunities for collaboration. As for recognition, it can be formal (part of career progression) but also informal through various awards and opportunities to share and discuss the work with colleagues. It’s all about giving a signal that SoTL is an important part of academic life and thus something worth pursuing.

A few tips to get started

If you’ve read so far and think “oh well, I would like to give it a try”, then here are some ideas on how to get started:

• Find an idea. Or let it find you. Actually, if you want to give SoTL a try you probably already have some “problems” you are thinking of, so it’s more a matter of writing them down and reflecting on them. They could be related to something you noticed in class (e.g. students’ attitudes, engagement) or questions you have about what methods or activities to use. A key aspect here is being curious and fully in tune with what is going on in your course. A tool that can help you keep track of that and reflect systematically is a teaching journal.

• Start reading. Here is where you are about to step out of your comfort zone. Because what you need to read is not really literature from your discipline, but educational science sources. This can be intimidating at first, but with a bit of guidance (and the help of some of the resources below) you will slowly become familiar with the new jargon and frameworks. One piece of advice is to start reading journals that focus on education in your discipline, e.g. medical education, engineering education, business education. Articles published in these journals can act as a useful bridge between your discipline and educational science.

• Collect data. Here is where you go into the classroom with a research hat on. There is a variety of ways you can collect data, from analysing assignments and course engagement to doing interviews, focus groups or administering surveys. Data analytics can also be helpful if you have a substantive part of your course activity online. Whatever means of data collection you decide is suitable to your project, you need to communicate this clearly to your students and explain that being part of the research or declining to do so will not have any negative consequence on their grade, etc. You can also mention how the data will be processed and who will have access. Chances are you will have had to think of all this for the ethics approval at your university.

• Get a “buddy”. SoTL research doesn’t have to be lonely. In fact it is double the fun if you team up with a colleague or two. It can be something informal, like a buddy to bounce off ideas with, but it can also be more formal, like a collaborative project. Think of what makes sense for you: having someone from the same discipline or even teaching the same course can be nice, but an inter-faculty/ interdisciplinary project can also be valuable and help you gain insights you otherwise wouldn’t.

• Analyse and write. I am sure these need no further explaining. Now that you have all the puzzle pieces, all you need to do is… well, do the work: data analysis and writing up. I want to mention here that I don’t think all the SoTL work has to become publishable (otherwise we might never even start). While we do strive for that, I feel that the most valuable part is doing the work itself and having the chance to present/ share it in whatever form. It can be a conference, a workshop, a blog. Or it can simply be the evidence you base the next course iteration on. Think about it, and don’t let the fact you don’t have time to polish it to a publishable form stop you from pursuing this important work.

Remember: SoTL is not a luxury. It’s a way to meaningfully weave teaching and research together.

Resources

• Utrecht Roadmap for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning- your step-by step-guide to researching your teaching practice;

• The SoTL Guide, by Nancy Chick- useful resources for your SoTL journey;

• Chick, N.L. (2023). Rereading SoTL: Toward New Beginnings. Innov High Educ, 48, 977–989.

• Felten, P., Geertsema, J. (2023). Recovering the Heart of SoTL: Inquiring into Teaching and Learning ‘as if the World Mattered’. Innov High Educ, 48, 1095–1112.

• Kim, A. S. N., Popovic, C., Farrugia, L., Saleh, S. A. F., Maheux-Pelletier, G., & Frake-Mistak, M. (2020). On nurturing the emergent SoTL researcher: responding to challenges and opportunities. International Journal for Academic Development, 26(2), 163–175.

• Cruz, L., Cunningham, K., Smentkowski, B. and Steiner, H. (2019). The SoTL Scaffold: Supporting Evidence-Based Teaching Practice in Educational Development. To Improve the Academy, 38: 50-66.

• Ko, M.E. (2023). The Current Landscape of Faculty Developers in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Across Diverse Campuses in the United States. Innov High Educ, 48, 1009–1032.

• Baxter, J., Gilbert, A., Selby-Fell, H. (2025). Where Are We Now with Digital Teaching? Critical Reflections on Digital Teaching and SoTL in Business and Law. In: Baxter, J., Selby-Fell, H., Gilbert, A. (eds) Creativity and Critique in Digital Learning and Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

• Open Scholarship for Teaching and Learning- journal where you can find SoTL research from various contexts.

The purpose of student evaluations

Lately, there has been a lot of commotion about student evaluations of teaching (SET). The purpose of SET is to monitor educational quality, to evaluate courses and teaching performance. There is a widespread perception among faculty that this purpose of evaluating teaching performance is to inform career decisions, such as promotion and tenure, instead of a tool for learning and a trigger for professional development. This perception about the purpose of SET as an instrument for summative assessment rather than a tool to inform continuing professional development (CPD) can influence teaching behaviour. Faculty can feel compelled to prioritise student satisfaction over good teaching, to secure good evaluations.

The changing role of the teacher

The role of a teacher in higher education has started shifting from a transmitter of knowledge to a facilitator of students’ learning process (van Dijk et al., 2020). For example, instead of passive lectures, teaching and learning activities have become more active, where students are required to co-construct knowledge with their peers. Teachers facilitate and guide this learning process. A good teacher also challenges students to become self-regulated learners.

Some students expect their teacher to immediately provide answers or explanations, without letting them construct the knowledge themselves. For faculty it can be difficult to push back against these expectations. Some teachers indeed mention that they worry about receiving low evaluations from students, and that this would have consequences for their career. However, a low grade does not necessarily mean the teacher is lacking the necessary teaching competences.

Towards continuous professional development: the role of reflection

In fact, the narrative feedback from students can help explain why they provided a low evaluation. Narrative feedback can give faculty insights into their performance and learning needs. Hence, SET can inform their continuing professional development (CPD). Teachers may reflect on these narrative comments in order to learn from them and improve their teaching performance. This reflection can take place individually or with others, such as colleagues, supervisors and direct managers. Reflecting and discussing the SET results with others can help teachers put them in perspective, thus increasing the learning potential.

A practical example

To facilitate these group reflections and discussions, the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) of Maastricht University organises structured peer-to-peer coaching sessions, three times a year. These sessions are organized and moderated by the taskforces Faculty Development and Programme Evaluation. The taskforce Programme Evaluation is concerned with monitoring and enhancing educational quality. During these sessions, faculty from different courses and with various levels of experience are brought together to discuss their SET results and are guided in their reflection on these results. Reflecting and discussing can help teachers to transfer SET results into actionable points to improve their teaching and inform their CPD.

Tips and Tricks

• Offer faculty development initiatives that provide teachers with the opportunities to discuss their SET results with colleagues;

• SET results are something to learn from and grow from. Don’t expect novice teachers to immediately receive high evaluations. Allow them to grow. Use evaluations in a more formative way (Roxå et al. 2022);

• As supervisor and direct manager, you can also initiate discussions about SET results to encourage teachers to learn from them;

• Offer a range of CPD activities aiming to help staff to grow in teaching competencies.

Useful resources

• Paper reconceptualizing student evaluations of teaching to support teaching quality (Roxå et al. 2022): https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00615-1

• The relationship between students’ evaluations of teaching and academics professional development (Karm et al., 2022): https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2022.2057214

• How can student evaluations lead to improvement of teaching quality? A cross-national analysis (Ulker, 2021): https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2021.1873406

• Interview with Dr. Carolin Sehlbach about feedback as a tool for growth in education: https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/news/carolin-sehlbach%E2%80%99s-research-examines-feedback-tool-growth-education

Dr. Niels van der Baan obtained his PhD at the Department of Educational Research and Development at the School of Business and Economics (SBE) at Maastricht University. His research interests include coaching and reflection for lifelong learning. Currently, he works as an Assistant Professor and a member of the taskforce Programme Evaluation at the Department of Educational Development and Research at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML) at the same university, where he also teaches in the Bachelor Health Sciences and the Master of Health Professions Education (MHPE). If you are interested in knowing more, you can contact Niels via email at n.vanderbaan@maastrichtuniversity.nl or on LinkedIn. Niels wrote this post in collaboration with Dr. Carolin Sehlbach from the taskforce Programme Evaluation, and Dr. Herma Roebertsen from the taskforce Faculty Development, both at FHML.

References

Dolmans, D. H. J. M., Gijselaers, W. H., Moust, J. H. C., Grave, W. S. de, Wolfhagen, I. H. A. P., & Vleuten, C. P. M. van der. (2002). Trends in research on the tutor in problem-based learning: conclusions and implications for educational practice and research. Medical Teacher, 24(2), 173–180.

Roxå, T., Ahmad, A., Barrington, J., Van Maaren, J., & Cassidy, R. (2022). Reconceptualizing student ratings of teaching to support quality discourse on student learning: a systems perspective. Higher Education, 1-21.

Van Dijk, E. E., van Tartwijk, J., van der Schaaf, M. F., & Kluijtmans, M. (2020). What makes an expert university teacher? A systematic review and synthesis of frameworks for teacher expertise in higher education. Educational Research Review, 31, 100365.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I spent most of my time trying to get faculty to think beyond Zoom, to design asynchronous learning activities in order to engage students. With mixed results. In the years post-pandemic, the Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are again being used as mere repositories of resources and platforms for submitting assignments.

But I believe that there is much more to asynchronous learning than we give it credit for. It can really bring added value to learning, in many ways, some of which I will outline below. This is why, when working with faculty, I try to get them to consider various modalities when designing their courses. I encourage them to think beyond the content of their learning activities, in terms of modality. Interestingly, I notice this is an angle they are not usually exploring, but, when given time, their reflections are really meaningful. A kind of “lightbulb moment”, even. Does everything need to happen in the classroom? Do we even have time for that? What can be done more effectively before class and how can we scaffold that and then link it back to the face-to-face session?

Teaching in a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) environment at Maastricht University, we focus a lot on collaborative learning and student agency. Even though in person sessions seem the most obvious place for that, it is difficult (and sometimes even counterproductive) to do everything in the classroom. Inevitably, parts of the process will spill over outside the classroom and thus they become impossible to capture. Moreover, independent learning plays a very important role in our model, and this often needs scaffolding (at least for first year students). By simply posting reading material on the VLE we miss the opportunity to support our students and we end up complaining they never do the reading.

Learning doesn’t happen only between the walls of the classroom, in the hours dedicated to a course. It happens beyond that, independently and in groups. We need to support and capture it better in order to create a rich learning experience.

This is not a call to use technology at all costs, to replace human interaction. It is a call to think deeply about how interactions in our courses take place and how we can shape them through intentional learning design, and with the help of technology.

A continuum of modalities

It’s not as straightforward as “being on campus” vs. “being online”. This is a false dichotomy. Learning is a continuum, a process that takes place in many forms, in different environments, individually and collaboratively, with or without our presence and support.

Why don’t we take some time to understand the strength of each modality and use it intentionally in our design? We can start from the learning goals, by understanding what kind of learning needs to happen to reach those goals. Where do students learn? How do they learn? When do they need us? In what form?

Here are some of my thoughts on asynchronous and synchronous modalities that you can use to support your reflection.

Why asynchronous learning?

• Asynchronous activities provide more flexibility, by giving students time to read/ watch the resources as many times as they need and reflect on them;

• By not requiring an immediate answer, asynchronous learning offers students time and space to engage more critically with the content;

• Teachers have the possibility to scaffold student learning and provide tools for them to develop their self-regulated learning skills;

• Asynchronous activities provide an archive of contributions and interactions- this is useful for both teachers and students to track progress and give/ receive feedback; it is also a good platform for peer learning;

• Including asynchronous learning in our mix enables us to provide a better structure, a red thread through the course, bridging the face-to-face sessions and supporting learning outside the classroom. This also has a positive impact on our communication with students, as it creates consistency.

Why synchronous learning?

NB: here I include both face-to-face and virtual synchronous moments (e.g. via Zoom, Teams)

• The greatest advantage of synchronous learning is immediacy. Simultaneous presence in one space (be it physical or virtual) and body language lead to richer communication and benefit learning;

• Synchronous interaction creates a good environment for exploring complex topics and processes through discussion;

• Synchronous activities are better suited for solving problems in a quick and efficient manner;

• The immediacy and simultaneous presence can be used for engaging in role plays and simulations;

• In terms of communication: the synchronous works better for more sensitive conversations (like group work not functioning well, etc).

Teacher-led or not?

Another decision we, as educators, need to make is when to get (more) involved in the learning process and in what way. What are students expected to achieve by themselves (individually or in groups) and where do we step in? This needs to be made very clear and explicit from the beginning (i.e. syllabus and first session), to make the most efficient use of our limited time together.

• It can be synchronous: usually this happens in the classroom, with the teacher being there to provide support, answer questions, challenge students to go deeper into the content;

• It can also be asynchronous: moderating and summarizing discussions, providing feedback, etc.

Mix / match

It’s not so much a matter of choosing one modality over the other but thinking in terms of what each one can bring to the course and mixing them accordingly.

For instance, collaborative learning activities can take place through a mix of modalities: they can start in the classroom, continue asynchronously as students work on a project, perhaps with some virtual synchronous sessions in-between, and conclude back in the classroom. One modality does not exclude the other, the key is in the intentional blend.

Some other ways to incorporate different modalities are:

• Interactive tools to support certain learning processes; students can use them in their own time, without direct teacher involvement. Here is one example of a tool my colleagues developed to support academic writing.

• Using ePortfolios to capture the process not only the outcome; for instance process of working on a project as a group, or the process of developing certain competences.

• Scaffolding independent learning with prompts; for instance developing workbooks with specific prompts for reflection in relation to the assigned reading/watching/ listening resources- this enables students to structure their understanding of the new knowledge and be more prepared in class.

My message here is: be curious, dare to do things differently, challenge your students but don’t forget to support them.

With universities currently being under threat by political decisions in different places around the world, as well as under considerable financial stress and facing the challenge of positioning themselves against emerging technologies like GenAI, it is probably a good time for this exercise of imagination: what if universities no longer existed? I know that not all of you work in HE institutions, but I think this challenge is also relevant for anyone outside (higher) education, and it may actually yield different reactions due to a certain level of detachment. One more disclaimer: I am aware I am not using a rigorous terminology, in this context by “universities” I actually mean all HE institutions in various forms and shapes, basically the institutionalised forms of HE.

All doom and gloom. Or is it?

My first reaction to this scenario was disbelief. This could no possibly happen. It felt like all of a sudden someone told you that you can’t use your right hand anymore. I simply could not imagine how an institution like the university could stop existing. True, the thought was also very new to me, thus my initial reluctance to even engage with it.

Then came fear. Not only could I not imagine how the world would look like without universities, but I actually felt very uncomfortable with this alternative reality. Very surprised by this strong gut feeling, I tried to understand what was the cause of my fear. Was I afraid that I would lose my job and my career prospects? This fear, rooted in basic survival instincts, is somewhat justified, at least at first sight. Having worked only in HE institutions throughout my career so far, imagining my work in a different context takes some courage and determination but especially some thinking outside the box. Yes, I am aware of all the shortcomings of the HE system, in fact this is one of the objects of my research, but still, my prudent self would rather stick to “the devil I know” rather than venture into the unknown.

Was it the fear of chaos? My mind was already exploring, apprehensively, a world where universities are no longer the gatekeeper of knowledge. The good part: knowledge is more accessible. The scary part: how would we know people are really qualified for their professions (especially in high stakes professions like medicine)? True, a diploma does not necessarily guarantee the qualification, but, I was telling myself, at least there is a system we can rely on. So what I feared here was not the disappearance of the university as an institution, but of the system behind how (higher) education is organised.

Or did I fear that the world would be missing something crucial, something I could not really put my finger on but instinctively felt that would make our lives poorer? Unlike the two fears above, this was still very vague. Almost like sadness or melancholy. Like mourning a loss of something that, though invisible, keeps us together as individuals and as a society.

Once the fear(s) started to subside- the rational me understood this is just a scenario, at least for now-, I started thinking about what is unique to universities and not easily replaceable (I’m not saying impossible). Just like looking for what is uniquely human in the GenAI discussion. And here is what I came up with.

Back to basics

When I think about what I would miss the most in case universities no longer existed (and yes, I still like to think of it as an unlikely scenario), my mind circles around three main ideas. Here they are:

• The university as community

This is all about connection, bringing people together, providing opportunities for collaborative learning. It’s about crossing and erasing boundaries between different groups, from within and beyond academia. It’s the social aspect that transcends and underlies teaching, learning and research.

• The university as dialogue

This is about transforming knowledge into wisdom through discussion. It’s about critical thinking and engagement with different, sometimes opposing ideas. It’s about learning how to develop an argument and find our voice. It’s about creatively solving problems. It’s about being fully present with ourselves and in our work.

• The university as space

A safe space to grow. A space to explore and experience, individually and as a community. A space to come together. A space for resistance, for curiosity, for change.

Winds of change

Even if the university as an institution won’t entirely disappear, or perhaps not in my lifetime, I still think it needs to change, sometimes drastically, to be able to withstand the societal, political, technological, environmental (+ fill in the gap) changes ahead of us.

Here is how I feel we could take those three aspects above further, to ensure universities can thrive despite all the challenges that they are and will be facing in the near future:

Open community

Explicitly placing the community aspect at their core can help keep universities relevant in a rapidly changing social climate. This includes opening up to various target audiences, what we call “non-traditional students” but what I prefer to call learners who have perhaps not had the chance to follow formal university education. Strengthening the links to other sectors outside academia is equally important. This could include involving professionals in various teaching and learning activities, such as mentoring and project work. And how about more connections with schools, helping to address the sometimes huge gap students experience when they come to university? Last but not least, as integral part of cities, universities could bring a huge contribution to the local community; currently, in many cases, the ties between the two are not as strong as they could be.

Beyond knowledge

With knowledge becoming more accessible, universities need to come to terms with the fact they so no longer hold the monopoly. Indeed, they should shift the focus towards a more active approach of collaborative knowledge construction. The skills and competences necessary for processing, interpreting and communicating knowledge take centre stage and need to become a more explicit part of the curriculum. To stay relevant, we need to keep asking ourselves “what do our learners need in order to become active and responsible members of society?” and see where in this process we can really bring added value. You may have noticed I did not choose to ask “what do our students need in order to thrive on the labour market?”. This was an intentional choice, as I personally do not believe that universities should profile themselves as a conveyor belt for the labour market (as many of our students see us right now). On the contrary, I feel that job-related knowledge is perhaps one of the first areas that is and will be best tackled outside university. Where we can add value is in developing the right attitudes and competencies that go beyond factual disciplinary knowledge.

Inclusive space

Universities need to become more intentional in terms of what kind of space thy want to be. With “traditional” formats like lectures, seminars and tutorials losing their appeal (although I definitely don’t think they are obsolete as such), it’s time to rethink our formats and modalities. This applies both to course level- where we can thick about more active, collaborative approaches that do not always fit in our current schedule templates- and to curriculum level- where we need to think beyond a classical degree (Bachelor or Master) and provide also more flexible qualifications, such as micro-credentials and stackable modules/ badges that can appeal to a broader target audience. Technology can really help in this pursuit, when used intentionally, to enrich the learning experience and make it more inclusive. A right mix of synchronous and asynchronous activities can provide space for competence development and knowledge co-construction, despite geographical and time barriers.

So it’s not all doom and gloom, I would conclude. What started like a really scary prospect, made me aware of what I value most in the university environment and therefore what I would like to preserve and enhance (just like in the terrarium below), regardless of the form and shape that universities might take 20, 50 or 100 years from now. After all, a university is not just a building or an institution. It is a state of mind, a collection of values and a space to think and discuss.

Last week I met a good friend who works in the corporate sector and, among other more pleasant things, we ended up talking about the impact of the current political climate in our respective fields. I started venting my frustrations about the excessive talk about efficiency, about being asked to do more with less, which, I said, can have a negative impact on the quality of the education we provide. Her next question was simple and yet it hit me with an unexpected force: “But how do you measure the quality of education?”. After quite a long - and uncharacteristic for me- moment of silence, I mumbled sort of an answer. As the conversation moved on, one thought got stuck in my mind: why is this question so difficult to answer? A lot of people in academia (especially outside STEM) are reluctant to using any kind of metrics. After all, education is not (only) about numbers, there are so many nuances that are very hard, if not impossible, to measure. While I totally agree with this view, and in fact I’ve been using it as a shield for a long time, I also realised this is the reason I could not give a clear answer to my friend’s question. And it also may well be the reason we cannot have a strong stance on the efficiency discussion. If we cannot really prove (yes, with hard evidence, if necessary, even numbers!) that the methods we use are working and are most suited, we are making ourselves vulnerable to the internal and external forces that are pushing for “education on a tight budget”.

So, let’s stop for a moment and think of the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that we want to consider in order to answer the question? Below I will give my personal perspective, and I think each of us, as educators, students or administrators in HE, needs to think about what good education means for them. Then, of course, we need to have this discussion at department and at institutional level.

Some ways of measuring quality

Don’t get me wrong, there are many formal ways of measuring (and indeed, ensuring) the quality of education. Take accreditation criteria, for instance. Pages and pages of often very abstract and rigid criteria and checkboxes that universities have to fill in on a regular basis. Waves of stress for everyone involved once every 4-5 years. What are we actually measuring there? Sometimes I get the feeling it’s the resilience of people having to prepare these thick files. Of course, it’s also about formal rules and regulations universities have to abide to. But what is labelled as a quality assurance measure all too often end up being a mere bureaucratic exercise (and a costly one, at that), very far removed from actually measuring and safeguarding the actual quality of education.

Then we have the university rankings. Highly visible and flashy, their purpose is to drive up enrolments, in a highly competitive HE landscape. Based on sometimes doubtful metrics, they paint a superficial picture of quality assessment, often biased and highly relative. Again, very little genuine quality evaluation at the core, mostly replaced by marketing efforts to find the best packaging.

Are these accurate way of measuring? What are we missing?

Where do I stand?

My friend’s question and my inability to give a decent answer pushed me to really think how I would measure the quality of education. What is for me quality education and what are some proxies that can help us measure it? This will be a very personal account, but you can find some resources for a more nuanced understanding at the end of this post.

What is quality education?

For me, as an educator and faculty developer, quality education means:

• First and foremost, a coherent, meaningful student experience- this does not only translate in high quality courses, but also in aligned, consolidated curricula, personalised, student-centred learning and assessment spaces (like ePortfolios, Problem-Based Learning, Project-Based Learning), collaborative learning opportunities, etc;

• An inclusive learning space: seriously thinking about who our students are, what they bring to the classroom and what they need;

• A supportive learning environment- making the appropriate resources and infrastructure available to students and educators: various services (career counselling, student support, Centres for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) and IT systems that support the student journey. Often underrated, they are crucial to student success;

• Educators that feel empowered and supported to enhance their teaching; and more importantly, an environment where educators regularly talk about teaching, ideally as much and as often as they talk about their research.

• Links with society: quality education means education that reaches and impacts different target audiences. This means looking beyond our traditional students, descending from the “Ivory Tower” and trying to engage more broadly and thus respond to different societal demands (we often do in our research, not so much in our teaching).

“The best is the enemy of good”

Never did Voltaire’s words sound more relevant than when I think of an important dilemma regarding education quality, one that comes in the spotlight with the efficiency discussion. As universities want to thrive in a highly competitive environment, they strive, at least rhetorically, to provide excellence in education. This race sometimes leads to innovation for the sake of innovation, often a flashy facade to attract students, very weakly related, if at all, with genuine quality.

And then the calls for efficiency force us to think where we can compromise and what is non-negotiable, where compromising would actually mean we are not standing by our educational principles and quality standards. It is precisely to answer this question that we need a good understanding of, and possible ways of measuring, what is excellent education, what is high quality education and what is good enough education (the minimum we can accept). And, of course, what resources go into each of them. Only when we have some of these answers can we draw the line and make some informed decisions. (Disclaimer: this is a process that takes time and strategic thinking, so it will not happen in weeks or months.)

Let’s take the example of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) at Maastricht University (UM). It is a student centred, active learning method that is generally conducted in small groups (max 16 students) and thus requires a high amount of tutors and other resources. The benefits are clear, and PBL is also the signature pedagogy and an important USP for the university. Every method needs to adapt in time to respond to the changes in student needs and other external forces (like for instance the Covid-19 pandemic). The key question is how far can we go in order to preserve the core principles while being mindful of the costs? Using educational technologies can, for instance, contribute to a more flexible and inclusive learning environment, but we need to seriously consider to what extent and in which ways technology can support learning in a PBL context and not see it simply as a cost-cutting exercise in terms of reducing the number of tutors. When implemented well, educational technology requires, at least in the beginning, quite a high investment (both in terms of infrastructure and in terms of support), something that educational leaders often choose to turn a blind eye to.

At an individual level

Moving away from the institutional level, as academics and educators we also have to deal with our own dilemmas. A recent post by Karen Costa on LinkedIn about what is a “good enough professor” brings out some of these thoughts. Our growth mindset, and also in my case the fact that my job is to support faculty to grow, makes it very difficult for us to settle for less. Even the sound of it makes some of us cringe. But how about framing it differently: it is not about settling for less or not being ambitious, it is about seriously considering the trade-offs we need to make in order to preserve our well-being.

It is not about becoming selfish and not thinking about our students. It is about reflecting on our role as educators and the ways we can bring most added value to the education process and to the learning experience of our students (with limited resources- alas, the day has only 24h even if some of us would like to think differently, and not all of them need to go into work). And based on that, decide on how we use our time best. Perhaps we will not be creating new educational materials but will dedicate more time to feedback. Or we will decrease the number of assignments but do more active learning in class. We need to understand when and how our students learn and prioritise those moments and modalities, while giving up on the illusion we can do everything perfectly at all times.

But how can we measure all this?

I’ve come up with quite a list of what quality education means for me. So I need to take a step back and see how we could possibly measure all those things. Here are some thoughts:

Measuring the student experience

Student evaluations: Let’s think for a moment: do the evaluations we currently use capture the entire student experience? They often focus on the evaluation of teaching, and even then, the questions and the metrics used are debatable. So, what would I like to try to evaluate (quantitatively and/ or qualitatively)?

• the types of interaction, not only at “contact hours”;

• forms of assessment and their impact on student learning;

• the alignment at programme/ curriculum level, connections between various courses;

• interdisciplinarity & transdisciplinarity (involving stakeholders from outside academia);

• what skills / competences do our students acquire?

Measuring the teaching staff experience

This perspective is often missed, unfortunately. How do we capture this? Self-reflection, discussions with colleagues, engagement with professional development activities, these are just a few ways in which we can get an insight into what educators think and do;

How about the links to the “outside world”?

Employability: What do our students end up doing? And (to what extent) has their education helped them perform in the labour market (do we provide them with what they need or not quite?). Evaluating this requires longitudinal studies, which are time and resource intensive. The downside here is that this angle, seen in a very rigid way, places universities in the position of degree factories. Is this what we want? Some food for thought.

Resources

“Measuring Quality as if Quality Mattered”, by Alex Usher;

“Measuring the Quality of University Education: Beyond the Nonsense of University Rankings”, by Paul Ashwin;

“Measuring teaching quality in higher education: assessing selection bias in course evaluations”, by Maarten Goos & Anna Salomons;

“Measuring Quality in Higher Education: A competency approach”, by James Warn & Tranter Paul.

Interdisciplinary can be defined as “the fact of involving two or more different subjects or areas of knowledge” (Cambridge dictionary). So far so good. Imagine painting on a white canvas and letting the colours merge and create new shades. Oh, wait. If only areas of knowledge were so permeable and fluid. In fact, they are more like concrete blocks, with sharp edges, and one needs to put in quite some effort to bring them together, by purposefully creating a space for these blocks to interact and reassess their shapes and positions. It’s only normal that we grow within one of these blocks, through our upbringing, studies and work. The important thing is to understand the need to step out now and then, into what may seem alien or unknown. To put on different glasses even if only for a short while. To start a dialogue we would otherwise not have. To start grasping our reality in all its complexity.

Why do we need interdisciplinarity?

It’s simple: the world is not neatly divided into disciplines. Every day we encounter problems that require knowledge and skills pertaining to different disciplinary areas. But our education is built around disciplinary silos that seldom interact. Or at least we are not being taught how and when they can interact. This artificial separation- and often oversimplification-, though useful from a purely pedagogical perspective, does impact the way we learn to think about the world around us. It impacts the way we search for and process information. It influences the language we use to talk about things. It even plays a role in defining our identity as we grow up: am I a STEM or a humanities and/or social sciences type of person? It limits us, in a way, by putting us in boxes that we need to later fight hard to move away from- that is, if we want to.

Our experience in real life is complex and often ambiguous. The answer to most of our challenges is often to be found by combining disciplinary knowledge and perspectives. This can imply working with people with different backgrounds, something we are often not very comfortable with. This is why I find it particularly important to try to incorporate an interdisciplinary lens in our education which is generally discipline-based, often leaving students poorly prepared for the labour market.

Interdisciplinarity in education

Making use of interdisciplinarity in education is not always straightforward. Though the main benefits are clear (even spelling them out here feels like common sense), when it comes to “how” and “where” we often find ourselves stuck, for various reasons I will try to outline below. But first some of the benefits:

Embedding interdisciplinarity in education can:

• Help students understand complex issues and become aware of how actions in one area can impact another, seemingly remote area. This also allows them to always keep track of the “bigger picture”, which is often easily lost when we think purely within the limits of one discipline;

• Enable students to consider multiple perspectives, so that they can develop a nuanced understanding of the issues at hand and be able to support their opinions with valid and well-founded arguments. This can also help foster a diverse and inclusive learning environment;

• Support students in learning how to make connections between what they learn in different subjects, and also with their experience outside university. This can mean applying concepts from one discipline to another and seamlessly accessing information from various domains during their problem-solving process.

Beside the knowledge related benefits, learning in an interdisciplinary environment can also help our students develop some crucial skills and attitudes that can greatly contribute towards their employability. Some examples are:

• the ability to talk to and collaborate with people with a different view; this often requires the capacity to “translate” concepts and theories from one’s discipline in a jargon-free way so that peers from other disciplines can understand and make use of them;

• the ability to find common ground- this entails going beyond the translation phase into finding ways to merge knowledge and frames of mind from different disciplines in a meaningful and productive way;

• discipline humility- knowing the boundaries of your discipline and understanding where and when you can learn from others. And being open to it, of course;

• curiosity- keeping an open mind for new and different perspectives, being open to having your opinions and beliefs challenged;

• reflection- acknowledging the importance of reflection to internalise the role of interdisciplinary for the learning process.

Notwithstanding the huge benefits, we seldom see courses and programmes grounded in interdisciplinarity, they are rather a much-welcome exception. Why is that?

Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge some institutional barriers:

• Education is organised in silos (faculties, departments)- this is in my opinion the biggest obstacle, as it brings about an endless series of logistical problems: students are enrolled in a certain faculty where courses are set up in a certain way, on certain days, with a specific duration and frequency, so, obviously, it is not easy to get students from different faculties together. And then, who is leading the courses, who is grading, who processes the grades… and so on. If you work in a university I don’t need to say more.

• Career progression, funding and publishing opportunities- basically they are all created to make you stay within your discipline. I do sometimes see funding streams where one criterion is working interdisciplinarily, and I appreciate these a lot, but the reason stated above makes them harder to access, as our entire network is often within our discipline. Catch 22. One needs to try and break this vicious circle.

And some personal barriers are also worth considering:

• The sense of belonging to one discipline;

• Lack of experience in working with peers from other disciplines (getting started is the hardest part);

• Lack of confidence: we often feel (for good reasons) we need to be knowledgeable enough in a specific discipline first in order to engage in interdisciplinary exchanges.

Varieties of interdisciplinarity

There are different forms of interdisciplinarity: multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity and all of them can find their way in teaching and learning, in various ways. Here are some ideas:

• Multidisciplinarity: activities where students get acquainted with other disciplines and come to understand how their discipline can contribute to the analysis or the solution of a given problem. These can be rather low stakes activities such as guest lectures, various resources that provide different perspectives on a topic or assignments that require students to put another disciplinary “hat” on.

• Interdisciplinarity: concepts, theories and methods from two or more disciplines are integrated in a unified framework in order to address a complex problem. Here we are talking about activities thar run for a longer period, usually for the duration of a course and can be more difficult to organise (see institutional barriers above). For instance, students from different disciplines (within the same faculty or from different faculties) could work together on organising a conference or a workshop, they could design and prototype a product, or they could work on a consultancy project. The process would be grounded in collaborative learning and the team configuration and meeting sequence and frequency could differ according to the learning goals and desired output. One could have interdisciplinary teams throughout the process, or work in smaller disciplinary teams and then periodically meet in a broader interdisciplinary structure. Thesis supervision could also involve supervisors from different disciplines, enabling students to incorporate various perspective in their work.

• Transdisciplinarity: inclusion on non-academic knowledge and collaboration with partners outside academia. Here we could have projects involving practitioners or partner organisations supporting students in their work. This is often an occasion students cherish, as it also provides them with insights into future career opportunities.

Another way of looking at interdisciplinarity is in terms of what disciplines are involved and how close they are to each other. We have:

• Narrow interdisciplinarity: there is a higher level of compatibility and even some overlap in terms of concepts and theories; for instance, I feel I can combine my political science and educational science quite well, especially when I look into the governance of higher education institutions. Similarly, I work at a School of Business and Economics, where students combine social science courses with mathematical and statistical knowledge;

• Broad interdisciplinarity: bringing together people from STEM on the one hand and social sciences and humanities on the other; they use very different concepts and theories so while the collaboration can be productive in the long run, a longer time to adjust and translate is necessary, as well as a more structured form of dialogue, where everyone comes in when their knowledge fits best.

Ways forward

To sum up, here are some of my tips for embedding interdisciplinarity in your teaching and learning:

• Don’t be afraid to step outside your comfort zone: talk to peers from other disciplines, debate differences and find common ground, get them on board for new projects (why not a new course?).

• Be curious and stimulate your students to be curious too.

• Seriously think about co-teaching or team teaching.

• Use collaborative learning and peer feedback to leverage the different disciplinary backgrounds.

• Look outside academia for new partners to bring into the classroom.

Resources

• Interdisciplinarity and the 21st century research-intensive university (2016), report by LERU (League of European Research Universities) offering insights into the implications of implementing interdisciplinarity for university governance;

• Knowledge dossier: Interdisciplinary education and community engaged learning, by Utrecht University- a collection of interesting articles on how to teach, assess and develop skills in an interdisciplinary context;

• Interdisciplinarity Beyond the Buzzword: A Guide to Academic Work Across Disciplines, by the Amsterdam Young Academy (AYA)- insights into the attitudes and practices of more than 20 intensely interdisciplinary researchers from Amsterdam University and beyond;

• A practical guideline how to tackle interdisciplinarity—A synthesis from a post-graduate group project, article by Max Oke Kluger & Gerhard Bartzke reporting findings of an interdisciplinary group project;

• Interdisciplinarity (Warwick International Higher Education Academy)- a collection of case study on interdisciplinary education;

• Interdisciplinary Projects – Moving from Transfer to Transformation in Learning, by Anette Kolmos, Aalborg University;

• Special issue on interdisciplinary education in the Journal of General Education, Vol. 45 (2).

  

A decade ago, I was an early career researcher having decided to switch disciplines, leaving behind political science to enter what was then a new field for me- educational science. Two things were clear to me: I had a passion for education and I had gathered a reasonable level of expertise on designing, delivering and supporting faculty to deliver online and blended education. All the rest was new, exciting but also scary. Diving into a new area of research- education science- and even more specifically the use of educational technology meant I was spending long hours at the library (the IoE Library in London) and having many revelations regarding theories, models and even terminology (you can read here on one my first blog posts, from 10 years ago, on exactly this topic).

That was when I started seriously engaging with the literature on educational technology. Since then I became “a regular”, both contributing as an author and using it as evidence in my teaching and my educational development work, supporting faculty (and sometimes also students) to use educational technology effectively and meaningfully for teaching and learning. This provides me with a mixed researcher/ practitioner perspective, which I find useful in taking a broader view on how research in the field has been developing and where it is/ should be heading.

Reflections on the status quo

Looking at how the body of literature in this field has evolved in the past decade, one thing is easy to notice: the Covid-19 pandemic led to intensive use of educational technology in education and, consequently, also to more research on it. The same thing we notice now with GenAI. But my question is: is this the research we need? And how about its quality? Does “more” equal “better” in terms of output?

I’ll start with two observations on current educational technology research (apologies for the generalisations, my aim was to see some underlying trends):

• Research is often focused on the technology tools. With tools coming and going at a very quick pace, (how) will this research stand the test of time?

• Research often offers snapshots of educational technology use, in (too) many cases neither systematic nor rigorously researched, based on interventions that cannot be replicated or lacking a clear connection to educational theories.

And here is what I am currently missing:

• more research on how educational technology is embedded in the learning process. This implies explicit and well-argued links to learning theories, going beyond simple use cases;

• more research on how teachers use educational technology and what their challenges are;

• more research stemming from the existing needs of teachers and students. I see a disconnect between what is being heavily researched (often what is fashionable) and what the real needs of teachers and students are. This is important because the closer we are to the current educational needs and challenges the higher the chances that the recommendations researchers come up with will be translated into practice and policy (e.g. strategic decisions at university level).

A wish list

Based on my analysis above, here is what I would like to see in the future in the field of educational technology research:

• More research that goes beyond tools and provides valuable insights into how educational technology can enhance the learning process in all its complexity. We are chasing a rapidly moving target, so the key to remain relevant is to focus on technology features and how they connect to learning, rather than on tools.

• More studies on teacher’s use of educational technology, shedding light on how to meaningfully integrate technology at both course and curriculum level.

• More research on how technology can contribute to addressing the increasing diversity of our learner population, by providing a flexible multi-modal approach to education.

• More studies focusing on the institutional level, looking into strategic approaches to educational technology integration (short, medium and long term). These studies are usually published in journals with a broad higher education or higher education management focus, but they should also feature more prominently in educational technology journals. What is the urgency here? Every day decisions are being made and lots of money is being spent by universities and most often this process is not based on evidence. So we need more and richer data from a variety of contexts in order to make the right decisions.

The impact of GenAI on the research and publication process

While we all have our wish lists, we also have to acknowledge reality and one of the factors we cannot ignore these days is the impact various GenAI tools have on the way we do our research and also on the publication workflow.

When used appropriately, many of them can be helpful at various stages of our research, such as processing or structuring a large amount of data. But I find writing a very personal process on which I am not willing to relinquish oversight. Writing is intrinsically linked to how we think and how we build an argument. Overreliance on a tool can, in time, lead to a decline in our cognitive ability, which is a very dangerous path to go down, as Mutlu Cukurova (UCL) pointed out during the discussions. Denise Whitelock (Open University UK) referred to this phenomenon as “lethargic cognition”, and it can also be linked to deskilling. Wouldn’t that be ironic, really, in a time where we keep talking about lifelong learning and upskilling to consciously give up on some of our crucial skills?

That is why it’s so important to maintain our agency in the research and writing process, which can be seen as part of a more holistic definition of AI literacy. It’s not only about learning how to interact more efficiently and effectively with LLMs but also about making decisions regarding when and for what (parts of) processes we want to interact with GenAI.

We need to remember that “AI can work spectacularly, but fails discreetly”, as Robert Clarisó Viladrosa (UOC) correctly pointed out. Often one needs specialised knowledge to notice hallucinations or factual mistakes. This is why we need to stay in the loop in our various roles, as researchers, teachers, editors or reviewers.

For publishing, this means more attention to ethical considerations (even more focus than before on questions of intellectual property, in a time when platforms are willing to give away our content for LLM training purposes), more serious discussions on who takes responsibility for inaccurate output (which constitutes fraudulent behaviour), increased workload (filtering out submissions written with a substantive AI contribution). It’s becoming clear that human oversight is crucial (very much like in the case of the research process), together with transparent policies and an open dialogue among all the actors involved. Hiding the topic under the carpet will not make it disappear.

The elephant in the room

All this leads me to the most important question of all, one that underscores all the considerations above: What are the limits of productivity and efficiency in terms of research?

Just by taking a few moments to reflect we can come up with a few ideas: pressure to have a high publication output leads (sooner or later) to trade-offs in terms of quality, as well as the temptation to take shortcuts, such as using GenAI to speed up the process and be more efficient.

The root cause, thus, lies beyond individual practices, at the institutional level (you see now why I think we need more research at this level). In order to address this, it takes concerted efforts to review and in many cases redesign promotion criteria and recognition systems. Moving away from the “publish or perish” mentality and focusing more on quality (originality, depth of reasoning, scientific rigour) instead of quantity would lead to nourishing a healthier academic culture. Yes, this is not something that can be easily achieved as it requires a chain reaction, with many actors needing to align strategy and action. But the good news is that it does also create a chain reaction, with hopefully more and more departments and universities starting to play this version of the game. What we can all do now is start having these difficult discussions in our teams and work towards a common understanding of our boundaries.

Peer review is common practice in the research world. What’s more, it is actually formally labelled as a mark of quality in terms of academic publishing. Strangely enough (or maybe not), in the other half (?) of our academic life- teaching- peer observation and feedback is not a mainstreamed practice. If you think about it, there can be many reasons for it, individual, institutional, even cultural. Teaching is all too often perceived as an individual endeavour and we can become rather protective about our classroom space, and even our syllabi. Having someone see us “perform” can be daunting and has the potential to bring out our most hidden insecurities. Spending time watching someone else teach can often be too much of a stretch on our already busy schedule. Coordinating peer observation schemes is a resource-intensive activity that many institutions cannot afford to prioritise.

And still. Personally, I feel like when it comes to teaching, I learn the best when I observe my colleagues teach or tutor. Sitting there, in the back of the classroom, I can notice all the small nuances one can’t learn from textbooks on pedagogy: the way you connect to your students, eye contact, that certain small activity that works in getting them unstuck… This is particularly valuable when you teach in active learning environment as we do here at Maastricht University, as there is no commonly agreed, foolproof recipe of Problem-Based-Learning (PBL). It is by observing colleagues that I can build my repertoire and continuously get better at it.

Why observe?

Peer observation of teaching can be conducted as a part of professional development trajectories, both initial and continuous (CPD)- ideally both. As teaching can take many forms, it is important to start from the premise that all of them can be observed/ shadowed. It doesn’t have to be a lecture or seminar, you can also observe or be observed during a coaching session or while supervising theses. The process and focus can shift a bit according to the teaching setup but the principle stays the same.

Peer observation in teaching can fulfil two types of purposes:

• Formative/ developmental: the mutual observations play a role in learning and developing as teachers; feedback and reflection are at the centre; there is no judgement involved, not any implications for the career progression;

• Summative/ evaluative: observation is one of the tools used to measure teachers’ performance and it is also used in the formal appraisal process.

It’s quite obvious, I believe, that the purpose of the observation has a big impact on how it is perceived and on teachers’ engagement with the process. In my view, the true value of peer observation is its developmental nature. I see it as an integral part of the learning process and as such we need to be very mindful to what extent we want to add an evaluative aspect or steer clear of it.

In my experience I’ve seen institutions that have mandatory observation schemes, others that make it an optional part of staff development and yet others where such an activity would be inconceivable. So again, a word of caution, it’s important to fully understand the needs, background and principles of teaching staff before deciding on an institutional approach regarding peer observation.

Who observes?

There are two equally useful ways in which observation can be organised:

• Peer observation- mutual observation between colleagues from the same or from different disciplines;

• Observation by an educational developer.

The focus differs slightly between the two types, but they can work well in a complementary way. While peers can provide each other with more comprehensive feedback (including on the content in case they teach similar topics) and can more easily put themselves in each other’s shoes, an educational developer’s feedback will focus on the pedagogical aspects, as they provide examples and insights into how we can improve our practice.

One small note here: the observation process can also be done in trios or squares (you can read more in the Resources section); while such an arrangement will most likely be logistically more complex, it offers the benefits of bringing more perspectives to the table and thus enriching the process.

Observation steps

Here are some important steps to make the observation process engaging and useful: 

1. Before the observation. Start by having a chat with your colleague. (NB: if you were not assigned one then you have an extra step before this one- finding an observation partner). Talk about your learning goals, your challenges and provide each other with some context about the courses to be observed. Set some goals for the observation and agree on a suitable schedule.  

2. During the observation. Sit in on a class of your colleague and have them sit in in on one of yours. You can use a form (if, for instance, your institution provides you with one) or just write down some guiding questions such as: “How do students engage with the learning activities?”, “Does the teacher encourage (shy) students to participate?”, “If they are struggling with a certain aspect of the class, what would you advise them?”. Remember the goals you set before the observation and try to work towards those, as this will bring most added value to your colleague. Don’t worry if you are not a specialist in the topic. The idea is to focus on the teaching, and sometimes you can do this better the more remote you are from the subject being taught. 

3. After the observations (don’t let too much time pass). Sit down over lunch or coffee with your colleague, have a relaxed chat and share your reflections. What have you learned and what are you planning to implement in the next iteration of your course? What are three things you could recommend to your colleague? What is one professional development goal you will set for yourself after this process? 

What’s in it for you?

Whether you are observer or observed (or both), there are many benefits that peer observation can bring to your professional and personal growth. Here are some of them:

• Getting access to a new perspective on our own teaching, in terms of pedagogical methods and/or content (depending on who is observing); sometimes having someone sit in our course can make us aware of things we did not even consider; and watching colleagues teaching can be a continuous source of inspiration!

• Feedback and validation: something we need at all stages in our careers; constructive peer feedback can help us grow and becoming aware that colleagues face similar challenges can be reassuring;

• A good opportunity to work on our reflective practice: the observation process provides structured opportunities for reflection, including an accountability element;

• A chance to connect with peers beyond our own discipline; that’s something we don’t get very often, let’s be honest. And when we do it, it can be so refreshing!

• Being part of a community: last but not least, peer observation helps us see teaching a bit less as an “individual thing”. Even more, it can be the spark that leads to building new networks and learning communities.

Tips

Like with most of teaching-related things, there is not “one good way of doing things”. So here are some of the things I consider important when doing peer observation of teaching:

• If you have the choice, don’t hesitate to look for peers in other disciplines. You may initially feel out of your depth but the end result will be so enriching that you won’t regret it!

• One of the most important thing for observations to work is creating a non-threatening atmosphere, based on mutual trust and respect, as well as maintaining a collegial attitude; don’t forget constructive feedback- remember this is a learning experience!

• Set clear expectations and be transparent about the goals and the setup of the observation process. Having everyone on the same page ensures that we are all making the most of this experience.

• Explain to students what you are doing and that having a colleague sitting in the back is part of your professional development. If they see you are still learning, this can hopefully help them develop a lifelong learning mentality.

• Make it a habit! Why do this just once? See it as a continuous opportunity to learn and grow. If your institution does not have a formal observation process, do it informally: talk to colleagues, check your agendas and give it a go.

Resources

Practical guides

• Teaching Squares: Observe and Reflect On Teaching and Learning (University of Calgary);

• Peer Observation of Teaching: Maximizing Benefits for Teaching and Learning (Oregon State University);

• Guide to Peer Observation of Teaching (University of Edinburgh);

• An introduction to peer observation of teaching (University College Dublin);

• Peer Review of Teaching (Vanderbilt University);

• Peer Observation of Teaching (University of Texas at Austin);

• Peer Observation of Teaching Guidelines (Yale NUS College);

• Twelve tips for peer observation of teaching.

Academic papers

• Peer review of teaching in higher education: A systematic review of its impact on the professional development of university teachers from the teaching expertise perspective (2020), by Lily Min Zeng;

• Peer-ing in: A systematic review and framework of peer review of teaching in higher education (2023), by Laura Cutroni and Angela Paladino;

• Peer Observation of Teaching in Higher Education: Systematic Review of Observation Tools (2024), Fernando Manuel Otero Saborido et al.;

• Peer observation of teaching: A practical tool in higher education (2017), by Jeffrey Alan Fletcher;

• Exploring the role of peer observation of teaching in facilitating cross-institutional professional conversations about teaching and learning (2021), by Muireann O’Keeffe et al.;

• Peer observation of teaching as a faculty development tool (2012), by Peter B Sullivan et al.;

• Peer observation of teaching: enhancing academic engagement for new participants (2013), by Conor Carroll and Deirdre O’Loughlin;

• The benefits of peer observation of teaching for tutor development (2007), by Amani Bell & Rosina Mladenovic.

Coming back to work after a long real holiday (yes, I mean no checking emails or doing any work for one full month) can be daunting. It feels hard to regain your rhythm, to reconnect with your routines, even to remember where you stopped and what you need to do next. I found that it really helps to just plunge into something (a project or a task) you really like and do this for a while, to help you ease into the workflow. This will both help you feel like you accomplished something- a quick win!- and will remind you what you like about your job- a more important motivational factor.

Sounds good, right? But wait a second: do we always know what aspects of our work we like best? What fills us with energy? And, conversely, what drains our energy? Do we have time in our busy days to even reflect on it? We march through workweek after workweek like zombies, sometimes feeling happy, other times angry, often tired, sadly too often overwhelmed. It seems like we never have enough time for everything we have on our plate. So we speed up. And, inevitably, soon enough we run out of steam.

If you read this and you are nodding, I see you. And that is why I want to start this new Academic Year with a sort of personal manifesto on slowing down. On regaining control of our time and making it work for us and not against us.

Re-evaluating our relation with time

Our perception of time is often distorted. We either feel we have all the time in the world for a certain task and thus we procrastinate, or we rush because the deadline is looming (or we waited till it was looming). We overestimate the amount of thigs we can (humanly) do in a day. We underestimate how long certain things take, if done properly. In short, we go about our lives with little to no clue about the real value of time. Until it’s sadly too late.

How about we think of time realistically? As a finite resource. And precisely because it is finite we need to be smart about how we treat it. For me this does not mean packing more into each hour for fear we might run out of time for all the things we want to do. It means exactly the opposite: resisting the pressure of acceleration and making each hour count, as we will never get it back.

But back to our lives in Higher Education (yes, time for a reality check!). With many competing demands for our time (remember: limited time)- research, teaching, other projects and duties-, our calendars are often fully booked weeks, if not months in advance. I started colour-coding mine and while it does make it slightly more appealing to look at and it shows the diversity of tasks I am working on, reality remains the same: it feels like I am not in control of my time. As I try to block any small gaps I can still find, I can’t escape this feeling of being on hamster wheel. And as if this weren’t enough, technology adds to this pressure: the need for quick answers, the expectation of being reachable online throughout your day, etc.

And all this in a context where I really like my work. I am passionate about supporting teachers in growing professionally and innovating their courses. I love connecting with my students in class and learning together with them. I appreciate being able to do research that eventually leads to better learning. And I am determined not to let this passion get lost in a packed colourful calendar. I am determined to make smarter decisions about how I use my (limited!) work time, so that at the end of the day I not only check my promotion criteria but I can proudly showcase my work and connect with peers over it. How do I want to do this? Here are some of my thoughts.

Slow down and make time to…

There are moments when you just need to go with the flow (intensive teaching with a fixed schedule, grant application deadlines, etc). But there are also moments where you can claim some time back and use it for something very valuable: reconnecting with your work. Finding what makes you tick, what you care about in your work, what brings you most satisfaction. Figuring out where you can really make a difference with your skills, passion and personality. This exercise does not need to take very long, it can also be done in a few hours, but I can guarantee it’s time very well spent. Not only do you emerge from it with a clear overview of your current tasks, but also with an idea of where your energy comes from and where it is most easily consumed. Just one note: be honest with yourself and be realistic. Some of the parameters of your work won’t change but you can grasp some unique opportunities to do more of what you like.

For me, this exercise resulted in a few small changes in how I plan and spend my time that made a difference for my motivation, wellbeing and productivity:

• “Thinking time”. So we work in academia, right? One would think “thinking time” is the least of our problems. Still, our calendars beg to differ. I realised I missed having time to engage with my work at a deeper level (i.e. beyond simply “doing it”). I have so many ideas after teaching a class, but never have time to write them down and follow through. I am lacking the time to get inspiration for potential future projects. I often leave meetings with some brilliant thoughts but quickly forget them as I am heading into the next meeting. So I blocked some “thinking time”, I made it a recurrent feature in my calendar. Sometimes the thinking is very targeted: an upcoming training or meeting, other times it’s more like blue sky thinking, not directly linked to anything I am currently working on. And this is often when the best ideas present themselves.

• “Connection time”. One of the things that make me tick is connecting with peers inside and beyond my institution. Exchanging ideas, getting inspiration, planning joint endeavours. This really brings me energy and often results in valuable input for my work. So I also added some regular “connection time” blocks in my schedule, which can be more formal or informal- anything from a meeting to a coffee chat, often making use of technology to connect with people who are geographically outside my area of reach. I see this as a sort of “recharging station”. Depending on what makes you tick you can dedicate time to make sure you get more of it done.

• Regular quick check-ins at the beginning and the end of the week: the moments when I revise time allocation for the week and reflect on how I spent my time. The key here is not too be too hard on yourself: the truth is, some weeks I could not even go close to my scheduled “thinking time”; but the fact I had it there to remind me was already a step further.

• Dedicated time for specific activities- it can be designing a course or a workshop, thinking through a project proposal or starting a new article. These are longer blocks of time (ideally a day or at least half a day) when I am totally immersed in that piece of work, free from meetings and other distractions. It’s an invitation to deep-dive, without time pressure.

And while we’re at it, and we are educators, I think we can apply the same principles to our students, too. Help them re-evaluate their relation with time. Have an open dialogue with them about how much time they spend on certain tasks (this is very useful in the course design process) and how they spend their individual study time. Give students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a larger task, with the appropriate support and scaffolding. Design your interaction with them so that they learn that an immediate response - and a quick reward- is not always necessary and not always the best thing. Above all, learn to value time together.

The silver lining of the pandemic

It’s hard (and somewhat weird) to be nostalgic for a pandemic. Yet, especially as the acute phase has receded back in memory, I find myself feeling nostalgic for all the connections I made in that period, while stuck in my living room in Berlin. There was a sense of urgency, the feeling that we were all in one boat, regardless of where we were in the world or the stage of our careers, navigating troubled and uncertain waters. We were all isolated in our homes, yearning for connection, tethered to Zoom or Teams all day long. Yes it was tiring, and stressful. Many (most?) of us has to transition to online teaching almost overnight and/ or help colleagues do that by developing faculty development programmes in the blink of an eye. So we looked for expertise; we searched far and wide (technology was there to help us) and reached out to peers on different continents to talk about our experiences and build the way forward, bit by bit, one Zoom call at a time.

What was interesting (and these things you see better with hindsight) was that we could not care less about borders and boundaries- geographical, disciplinary, hierarchical, you name it. There was something very powerful and personal in these virtual encounters- maybe because they were our lifeline at the time? I don’t know the answer. All I know is that we slowly but surely came back to our offices, reintegrated in our bubbles and fell back into our old routines. I can’t help feeling sad about it, but I also feel grateful for having met such wonderful people, with many of whom I am still in touch.

But maybe all is not lost. Maybe, like me, some of you also miss those opportunities to connect. So maybe we can do something about it!

The value of connecting (virtually)

If you are reading this you are probably aware of the value of connecting, so see this a brief recap of the main reasons we should try to keep that spirit alive:

• Communities of practice: we all need communities were we feel “at home” professionally, where we can connect with like-minded peers, co-create, learn, exchange, dream up new projects… In my experience these are richer the more diverse the people belonging to them. Informal or rather more formal, they allow us the privilege to escape our bubbles and be part of something bigger, adding nuances to our experience;

• Chance encounters: while we all belong to some “tribes” and networks, there is great value in serendipitous connections, with people you might have never had a chance to meet. Social networks like Twitter (ooops, I mean X), back in its good days, provided just that. And during the pandemic it was literally a godsend. But things being as they are right now, we need to try to find other ways to facilitate these types of encounters. They need not be other social networks though…;

• Flexibility and accessibility: the good thing about interactions during the pandemic is that they were all virtual. That provided a lot of freedom to attend meetings and conferences, sometimes literally around the clock, as time zones were not a huge obstacle either. It’s crucial to try to keep these two elements in mind, as they are key to an inclusive approach to community building;

• Sustainability: a very important factor to consider. Meeting in person does have its benefits, but long lasting connections can be maintained more sustainably using technology, allowing us to protect both our (individual or institutional) purse and the environment.

Make time & space to connect

So it’s time to burst some bubbles again, I’d say! And this time intentionally, and not because we were thrown into a deadly pandemic. Let’s show we learned our lessons. Let’s try to build in time to connect in our schedules. Yes, you may laugh but for a few months now I added some small blocks in my calendar called just that- “time to connect”. I use them for anything from a coffee with colleagues from another faculty to reaching out to old friends/ colleagues across the ocean or, why not, contacting someone I always wanted to meet to discuss possible collaborations. I realised this is one of the things that really fuel me professionally, that give me joy and keep me motivated. So why waste the opportunity while mindlessly stumbling through my days between meetings? Besides, we are so lucky to have all the tools we need for this at the touch of a button. And yes, I think this is a great use of technology in our professional lives, albeit probably not acknowledged enough, or taken for granted.

These virtual interactions can take many different shapes, here are just a few ideas, followed by some examples in the “Resources” section:

• Webinars, workshops & short online events: synchronous events on specific topics, ideally interactive; yes, we had an overload of these during the pandemic but I must admit I did learn a lot and had fun even in some of them; when designed well, they can provide bite-size learning experiences and opportunities to connect;

• Podcasts: because of their asynchronous nature they provide a lot of flexibility, giving us the chance to listen to interesting conversations while cooking, running or commuting; if you host your own podcast you have the privilege to meet many inspiring people and share your chat with the world;

• Online conferences: yes, they are not the easiest to organise, if you want to leverage interactions and genuinely connect people. But luckily the technology is there, and by combining synchronous and asynchronous elements you can make the content accessible to a much larger audience. I am not mentioning hybrid setups on purpose, as I am not a big fan and I know from experience they are even more difficult to get right, as you have to cater to two different audiences simultaneously;

• Networks/ Communities of Practice: look for networks and platforms that work on your topic(s). It may take a while to find the right one(s), but once you do you will find many opportunities to learn and contribute actively (and virtually).

I am extremely happy to see “The Educationalist” community steadily growing. I am dreaming up some new projects, involving more of a community element, and will hopefully also restart my podcast in autumn. So stay tuned and thanks for being here!

Resources

MYFest24: an open education festival hosted virtually, with synchronous and asynchronous elements;

Open Networked Learning (ONL): a platform and community space built on an international and cross-institutional collaboration;

OneHE: a platform providing practical and engaging microlearning on effective teaching in a safe and supportive online community; they offer both free and paid content, to individuals and institutions;

Three great long-running podcats for and about HE educators:

• Teaching in Higher Ed

• Tea for Teaching

• Lecture Breakers

Facilitation is a very important part of our work life and the more skilled we are at it the more effective our work becomes, whether we talk about teaching, administrative tasks or even research-related duties. It is all about working with people, bringing structure and purpose to the discussion and encouraging engagement. It requires a sharp analytic but also synthetic mind, as well as the skill to navigate different, sometimes diverging opinions and work towards a common understanding. So whether you are planning the group assignments for your next course, organizing a meeting or designing a workshop, this newsletter is for you!

When do we use facilitation techniques?

Facilitation tools and techniques are very versatile. To give just a few examples, here is when they come in handy:

• Teaching: more concretely, the active learning elements of a course, like group work, debates or simulations can be run using some of the facilitation techniques you can read about in the resources provided below; in these activities, the instructor plays the role of a coach or a facilitator; be it chairing the discussion of reading materials, having a structured debate in class or suggesting weekly group exercises for the students, it is very important to keep the discussion on track, make sure all students are engaged, which sometimes requires specific efforts to reach out to the shy students and, generally, just make sure the learning objectives you set for your course are followed through;

• Workshops: this format is often used at conferences and in the context of various projects; unlike a series of presentations or an open discussion, a workshop is supposed to take a “hands on” approach, with participants playing an active role in the respective tasks. Here too, the workshop leader or facilitator has a very important part, from the design stage- by designing engaging activities- up until the wrap up stage, where all pieces of the puzzle (should) come together;

• Meetings: facilitation techniques can be used in all types of meetings; whether you are brainstorming ideas for a new project, trying to reach a consensus or reconcile diverging views, you can use some of the exercises and tools below to support you in your endeavour. Meetings need not be boring or unproductive,

  they can also be intellectually stimulating, fun and especially efficient;

• Conference panels: while they are a more traditional, and arguably more passive format, panels are still the most used conference setup; that is precisely why the role of the chair is extremely relevant and can “make or break” a conference panel. Beside keeping track of time, which is a key task, chairs need to constantly link the contributions and bring them back to the panel theme, encourage the audience to react and ask interesting questions and, last but not least, be flexible and always have a plan B, in case speakers do not show up, there is no audience, technology is not working, etc;

Facilitation in teaching

Let’s focus more on how we can use facilitation techniques in teaching, because here I can use my experience both as teacher, using active learning with my students, and as faculty developer, where I train future tutors who in turn will have to act as facilitators in the classroom.

To better understand the roles a teacher- facilitator has, we can start with the simple definition of the verb “to facilitate”: to make an action or a process easier. So essentially, we are the guides in the learning journey, making sure to keep the right balance between student agency and providing support. Often this role is paired with that of a coach, as we help students learn how to navigate uncertainty and train essential skills.

If I look at my work, I can see five main aspects we need to focus on as facilitators in the classroom (and sometimes beyond it):

• Guiding students in acquiring, building and exchanging knowledge: making sure the learning objectives of your course are fulfilled while not actively teaching. Doing this well takes experience and often quite a lot of effort. We need to provide the right amount of quality resources and the appropriate level of scaffolding (to be taken away gradually as it becomes unnecessary). We need to design the contact time in a way that enables exchange, co-creation, peer feedback- but also be ready to step in when (and only when) the process needs steering. We need to provide a structure students can build on, while at the same time making sure they maintain their agency.

• Supporting students in asking the right questions: questions are the key, most of the time more important than the answers. We need to work with our students to master the art of asking good questions, and this takes a lot of practice. It also means developing an inquisitive mindset and critical thinking skills and therefore it requires creating a safe environment where students are not afraid to question things and are not focusing only on giving the right answer;

• Helping students see/ make connections: this is what I find most challenging and that is why it has been my focus recently. Making connections between new and existing knowledge, what we learn and our life experience is not something that comes naturally to all students so we do need to provide them with some support. In my course, I use mind maps to help students structure and make sense of the literature so they can eventually solve the PBL case. They do this in small groups and the from their engagement and performance in class I can see they find this useful;

• Steering the dynamic of the group: it’s not all about content though. A facilitator’s role is very much process-oriented. We need to observe the dynamic in the classroom, see how people interact, try to balance shy and overpowering participants, diplomatically solve conflicts if they arise, continuously motivate people and making sure their attention levels are up. All these are processes that run in the background: when all goes well our role is actually invisible;

• Supporting students in developing their own study strategies: actively reflecting on how students learn, what they need in order to learn effectively, talking about it openly in class- all these are also tasks performed by a facilitator. After all, we need to make the learning process easier, that is what the definition says, right? So the process is as important (at least) as the content.

Moreover, we can think about coaching/ training students to be facilitators themselves, a very useful skill not only during their studies but especially at their future workplace.

Five key things to remember

Regardless of which situation you are in, if you find yourself in the role of a facilitator, it is worth remembering to:

1. Set clear goals for the discussion, group work, workshop, panel, etc and communicate them to the participants in an unambiguous way; everyone should be on the same page from the onset;

2. Design a clear structure and make sure you follow it throughout the activity; define the rules of engagement;

3. Make sure participants listen as well as participate during the activity; active listening and active contribution are two sides of the same coin; to ensure coherent engagement, always make sure participants listen to each other;

4. Offer constructive feedback throughout; build on the various contributions, always try to find synergies and help participants make connections; also, very importantly, reframe the issues from different angles; this can often show the way out of a stalemate;

5. Wrap up the activity by summarizing the main points in a coherent manner and with a clear link to the initial goals, in order to close the circle; run a short activity on lessons learned (make sure you keep enough time for that); in case of active learning, a debriefing moment is a key part of the assignment.

Resources

Most of the resources below contain a wealth of activities that you can easily try in your next class, workshop or meeting, with detailed instructions on how to put them into practice. I suggest bookmarking them for easy retrieval when needed.

Library of facilitation techniques- a collection of interesting activities you can use, according to your goals;

Gamestorming- a set of co-creation tools that you can use in your classes, workshops or meetings;

Community building activities- a great collection curated by Maha Bali, Mia Zamora and Autumm Caines;

Facilitation Tools for meetings and workshops- another nice assortment of activities you can use in your context, grouped by goal;

How Good Are Your Discussion Facilitation Skills?- article introducing a Teacher Discussion Facilitation Instrument that you can use with your students or for self-reflection;

Liberating Structures- learn about a different way to facilitate your meetings and workshops;

Framestorming- learn more about this technique that encourages you to actively reframe a question and challenge its assumptions;

How Brainstorming Questions, Not Ideas, Sparks Creativity- more about “framestorming” and the importance of questions;

Participatory Facilitation Techniques- a selection of techniques to engage your audience;

What do facilitators do?- a short video about the role of facilitator with its different dimensions;

More resources on facilitation, group work, active listening, team roles, mediation, consensus decision-making and more.

One of the things I hear very often is how we want students to understand it’s ok to make mistakes, how we want them explore and express their ideas out loud without inhibitions. And then we grade them. We demand they fit our well-designed rubric boxes (in the best case scenario, where these exist). There is an intrinsic tension within this dynamic, doubled by the general expectations that in order to succeed you need to “give the right answers”, or “find the right solution”.

And even though as humans and as educators we are well aware that learning from mistakes can work really well (under some conditions I will talk about here), it’s not the easiest message to convey in the classroom. And it is not easy because it’s not only about how we communicate it but also about how we design the learning and assessment process. Even more than that, it is about creating a certain kind of learning environment and about changing mindsets (students’ as well as teachers’). These are things that take time. But as usual, all things worth doing take time. So I’ll start with some general thoughts about creating space to learn from failure, followed by some examples of activities (some of them really low threshold) that will hopefully inspire you to take the first steps in this direction.

Learning from failure is all about…

• Awareness: openly talking about mistakes and failure and their role in our lives and especially for learning is a very important first step. The goal is to slowly but surely work towards changing our attitude towards failure- our own and our students’.

• Process: seeing learning as a process, where to various steps are at least as important as the final outcome, can help frame mistakes as a natural part of the process. It also provides us with opportunities to design our learning experiences in a way that provides students with a space to try and fail without immediate consequences on their grades.

• Reflection: learning from failure happens through reflection. Providing space and sometimes also structure for reflection is critical in this process. What went wrong? Why? What can be done differently next time? Simple questions, yet often overlooked.

• Assessment… done right: intentionally (re)thinking what is graded and what is not, as well as developing constructive feedback practices are key to creating the premises for learning from failure. After all we can’t realistically expect students to freely experiment in a very clearly structured graded assignment, with the risk of getting a lower grade. But perhaps we can then offer them a different space to experiment…

10 ideas to make failure a learning opportunity

1. Start with yourself: share your own learning journey and mistakes that led to your growth. Talk openly about what you learned from those mistakes. You can talk about multiple journal rejections, failed grant applications, postponed promotions. And yes, it won’t be easy. It will be quite hard. It may be therapeutical. This is all about modelling the behaviour we want to see in our students.

2. Admit when you don’t know something: show vulnerability and be ok with it. Another hard one, I know. One that comes with experience. No matter how good you are in your field, you are bound to have moment when you receive questions you just don’t know the answer to, off the top of your head. And that’s ok. You can either admit it and promise to look up the answer (and then do it!) or be brave and start exploring together with them what the answer could be. You may make mistakes in the process, so that’s an opportunity to be explicit about it (see point 7).

3. Try to come up with “goal free problems”- problems that don’t have one good answer and where the important thing is the reasoning behind the answer. This releases students from the cognitive load of having to achieve a specific goal (i.e. the right answer) and encourages them to enter a more experimental state of mind, where they can bring various solutions to the table.

4. Always dig deeper: ask students to explain their thinking process, even when the answer is wrong, or especially when the answer is wrong. It is all to easy to dismiss a wrong answer, but then we miss a very important learning opportunity. Students can then try to trace back through the process where exactly the mistake happened and this can increase their chances of avoiding it next time. It also helps demystify a mistake, by “unpacking it” and having students realise it may a have been just a small detail or logic flaw and not a total lack up understanding of the topic.

5. Encourage practice: this works well especially when developing a skill. Have students try it once, record imperfections, try it again, make note of improvements, and so on until they realise they mastered the skill. This helps them understand that in most cases it’s nearly impossible to get it perfectly right the first time, but that we need practice to get better at it. For example, they can work on their presentation skills by recording themselves, watching it and then repeating until they are satisfied with the result.

6. Design “fail forward” activities: for instance ask students to analyse a mistake they made in a recent assignment and discuss ways to improve it. This intentional reflective exercise helps them turn their mistakes into learning opportunities. Reflection can help students understand why the mistake occurred, put it into context and come up with alternative solutions. More importantly, as an educator you only facilitate the process, and not give them the correct answers yourself.

7. Make a mistake. Intentionally. And then talk about it. For example do a search that you know will not yield the results you want. Or point students towards tools or resources that you know are not optimal for the task. It sounds a bit risky, but if you know what you are doing, you can use this controlled learning environment to show students that mistakes happen in real life but there are ways to get back on the right path. The idea here is to have them generate solutions that will allow them, under your guidance, to overcome the error and eventually solve the task. It helps them be spontaneous and resilient and not take a step back any time a mistake happens.

8. Really think about what you grade and how. Think about what is important for you in your course. Is creativity important? Then make it explicit. And follow through in your assessment approach: you want to be clear what exactly you are grading, or perhaps you can give them a few non-graded attempts first? If creativity is the goal then you could make a point in cherishing imperfections. It’s all up to you, but make sure you are sending the right message and that it is consistent with the grading policy.

9. Focus on the feedback: two important (connected) things here: providing constructive feedback and designing moments where they can implement the feedback (e.g. submitting a draft and then the final paper, or any multi-stage assignment, offering a mock presentation opportunity). Beside self-reflection, specific formative feedback is a great way in which we as educators can support students in learning from their mistakes.

10. Create a sandbox. Intentionally create space and time for students to explore different ideas, tools, approaches (whatever fits your course). Yes, it’s hard to fit this is a tightly packed curriculum, but doing this regularly, risk-free (i.e. with no implications on assessment) is one safe way to build the trial & error mindset. For instance, give them a week to test a few methods before coming up with “the right” one for their thesis or paper. Ask them how the process went. Help them learn from playful exploration.

Resources

“Failure: Learning in Progress (FLIP)”- a project including curated examples of specific activities and more general approaches for learning from failure;

Strategies for Learning from Failure- article by Amy C. Edmondson exploring different types of failure and how to develop a learning culture that encourages experimentation;

Annotated failure as a design course deliverable, article by Renee Wever on how to learn from failure in a design course;

Museum of Failure- a collection of failed products and services from around the world.

There is no secret that academia has a way of putting “the product” first, be it a published article, theses, essays or exams. In fact, the more measurable, the better, as it makes it more straightforward to evaluate. But especially in the past year we have become more and more aware of the pitfalls this approach has: AI made us feel that we are losing control on the thing that we seem to value the most- the final product could be totally disconnected from learning and thus not an effective way to measure it. So what do we do now? The answers ranged from panic to trying to safeguard academic integrity by buying technology to counteract technology, to reassessing assessment (but often decoupled from the rest of learning). What I find the most useful is the attempt to learn, together with our students (and hopefully with our institutions), how best to use the new technologies in the learning process.

Wait, what did I just say? The “learning process”. Let’s begin by acknowledging that learning is a process, and that, even though harder to measure, the process is at least as important as the product. In fact, for me personally, the most important aspect of learning is learning how to learn.

So let’s focus on the process behind it all. Take a moment to consider these questions (you can do it before reading further but also at the end, or, better, both):

• How does learning happen?

• How do we know it’s happening?

• How can we support and facilitate it?

• How can we measure it?

Why focus on the process?

If you know me by now, you’ll expect me to start with the “why”. And I will not disappoint. So, let’s have a look at some of the reasons why I think we need to pay more attention to the learning process:

• Structure and consistency: by definition, a process implies a certain degree of structure and consistency. Moving between different steps, gradually building a knowledge base, being able to plan the way ahead, at least to a certain extent, enables students to go through courses and programmes more mindfully, instead of rushing towards the end goal. Yes, it does require a consistent workload (instead of cramming before the exam) but it also provides educators with more opportunities for scaffolding and support our students at different stages in the process.

• Space for (deliberate) practice: valuing the process as a whole leaves more space for two things that I consider crucial for learning: practice and reflection. Giving students the chance to practice consistently and with purpose, and to learn from failure in very important for their development. Building in moments of reflection, and providing the appropriate amount of guidance and coaching can go a long way in helping them develop a healthy habit of taking things (i.e. their learning in this case) one step at a time and learning to own and to enjoy the process.

• A great venue for formative assessment: if we put the process at the centre we create more opportunities for a more meaningful approach of assessment, leaning towards the formative rather than the summative. Of course, feedback plays an essential role, both in terms of us providing feedback and students seeking and integrating feedback in their future work.

• Developing skills alongside knowledge: if we look beyond the final product, a whole new horizon of learning paths opens up. Students develop important skills in the process, like critical thinking, team work, communication or project management. All not immediately apparent in a final exam or essay.

• Patience: a process takes time; this is something we all need to learn. By having students move through the various steps of the process intentionally, we help them train their patience, an invaluable tool we all could use more of on a daily basis.

Putting the process first requires a different learning design and a change in our mindset. I will explore each of them below.

Designing for the process

Here are some thoughts related to learning design that could help us centre the process a bit more. They apply both to course and programme level (perhaps the idea of process is even more important at programme level, as it needs to guide the alignment of different courses that students experience as a whole).

• Rethinking our learning goals. The value of the process (as opposed to just the outcome) needs to be clearly mirrored in the learning goals. Think here about things they learn “along the way” (skills often fall in this category) and make them explicit. Maybe ask students to think along and set their own goals, as this gives them more ownership of the process.

• Clear structure is the key. If we want students to understand and internalise the role of each step in the process we need to provide them with a clear structure. Pay attention to the sequence of activities, the balance between types of activities (individual and collaborative, acquisition and production, etc), be mindful about the workload required for each step. Create milestones (and celebrate them!), and design regular feedback moments (be it teacher or peer feedback).

• Reflection is not an afterthought. Build in reflection opportunities at various places in the course. It can be anything from a few minutes at the end of class to learning diaries. In the best case scenario, students also could benefit greatly from having coaches to support them with reflection, as Niels van der Baan explains here.

• Assessment that supports the process and not only evaluates the final product. Here we can try designing a series of smaller assignments that build on each other. They can be used mostly formatively, with feedback being the most important element. Not everything needs to be graded. Clearly this takes more time than one final assignment, but it’s a choice we have to make. Having all assignments in one place can really help us and our students to capture the process and see the progress. ePortfolios are of great help here.

• Don’t forget about communication. Being clear and explicit about why the process is important, about how we capture and assess it, is key to students’ engagement. Make a point of marking the transition between modules, create visual timelines with the various steps- these are just some ideas.

Changing our mindset

Let’s remind ourselves one thing: what we try to do here is change a mindset- that what matters most is the final product-, and this takes time and patience. Moreover, it is a change of mindset for all actors involved. Students will need to put in consistent workload throughout the course and not only at the end. Educators will need to redesign their courses and potentially bring more work upon themselves in terms of guidance and feedback. Higher Education institutions will need to create new structures and policies to de-centre the final product.

So this will definitely not be a quick process. It may be painful, and painfully slow. Ditching the overreliance on the product, on the written word, is not something that will happen without resistance in academia. But it’s a process (!) and we’ll go through the motions and celebrate each small victory.

What we need to put our efforts into is creating mechanisms to support the learning process, instead of investing in the latest technologies to counter the negative effects of other technologies. Invest in learning design instead. Invest in teacher professionalisation. Invest in learning how to make the most of our limited time with our students.

Resources

• Tips and Tricks for Spaced Learning, by Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen- very useful tips on how to design effective learning experiences using the principle of spaced learning;   

• Learn how to Study Using... Retrieval Practice, by The Learning Scientists- an article that provides students with some great ideas on how to use retrieval practice in their studying;

• Incorporating Principles in Cognitive Psychology to Improve Student Learning- some more ideas on how to use cognitive psychology principles in learning design;

• Encouraging Metacognition: Helping Students Learn How to Learn- some techniques on how to encourage metacognition as a tool for learning.

I often write about various teaching methods, about designing courses and curricula, about my work as educational developer in supporting faculty with their teaching. The predominant role underlying all these cases is that of teaching in the classroom, or sometimes online (or in a blended environment): imparting knowledge on a certain topic, in some cases co-creating knowledge together with the students, followed by assessing the respective knowledge in different contexts (roughly summed up). The course design is of course an iterative process following the teaching and learning cycle. It is, thus, part of teaching, albeit a role that is sometimes shared with learning designers or educational developers. But this is not the purpose of this post.

This week I want to bring forward some other roles we fulfil in our activity as educators. These roles can be labelled as “teaching” but we need to acknowledge that they require different mindsets, processes and even new skill sets. Let’s see if you can identify with some of them. How many of you have been supervising Bachelor or Master thesis? How about coaching students? Have you also found yourself advising students on their studies and curriculum journeys? These are the three roles I want to focus on today. I will, in turn, reflect on how each of them can enrich us and our students and on what we need to keep in mind to perform them well.

Thesis supervision

Even though thesis supervision is quite a common role, it’s surprising how little there is out there in terms of support for those of us starting out in this role. I had this problem myself and was lucky to have colleagues who kindly shared their advice and support. The process and requirements vary from institution to institution and sometimes from programme to programme, but the core principles stay the same. My colleague Therese Grohnert did a great job putting together some advice here and together with other colleagues co-authored this hot off the press systematic review on effective thesis supervision.

Once you get the hang of it, I find that the process can be enriching both for us and for our students:

• We learn how to balance support and autonomy in the right doses, as we encourage our students to take ownership of the process and we adjust our scaffolding accordingly;

• Because we work with a student for a longer period we get to know them better, beyond their presence in the classroom, and we get to observe their progress (and make them aware of it!);

• We get to practice giving constant feedback and also train students in accepting and using feedback constructively, a skill they will need in their future;

• If interests and topics align, and the thesis quality is high, we may have just found our next co-author.

What we need to be good thesis supervisors?

• Communication skills: it’s all about developing a good working relation with our students. Plus: here we talk about one-on-one relation (unlike in the classroom), so communication plays an even greater role. Try to be clear, make all expectations explicit and create a communication flow that works for both parties;

• Structure and planning: while students need these two ingredients in writing their thesis, as a supervisor you need them at least as much, especially if you are supervising multiple students, which is often the case. A thorough planning of the process, ideally with a way to track progress, can be a useful tool;

• Feedback skills: knowing when to provide feedback, how extensive and how specific it should be is a key skill you will get the chance to perfect while supervising your students. remember it needs to be effective and efficient for both of you;

• Patience: unlike a course that follows its path (and even there surprises are possible), thesis supervision is not predictable and depends a lot on the students and the relation you establish with them. There will be times when things go smoothly and other times when… well, your patience will be tested;

• Reflection and experience: as there is no recipe for being a good supervisor, we can learn a lot from experience, through reflection, and by talking with colleagues.

Coaching

Some of us may find ourselves in the role of a coach (in some cases it’s called a mentor), which can be puzzling at first, as we try to understand how it differs from that of a teacher or tutor. We can coach students in different contexts, for instance one I am more familiar with- coaching for skill and competence development, but it can also take place in the context of project-based learning, when coaching students through the process. I am what we call an “academic coach” in our Competence-Based Coaching course about which I wrote some more here. Students also have a “professional coach”, who is a practitioner and can provide insights from the respective field. I find this mix of complementary experiences very useful to students, allowing them to transition more smoothly to the labour market. My colleague Niels van der Baan wrote more about coaching for employability here.

Some things I appreciate about coaching are:

• Seeing the student as a person, understanding what drives them, feeling that you can witness their progress and know you played a small part in it can be very satisfying;

• Working with students towards developing a skill or throughout a project is different from teaching a course; it often makes us push our limits, find new ways to support students and thus it provides a challenge that we often need (without even realising we need it) to stay motivated in our work;

• Coaching is a form of partnership so it forces us to rethink our relation and ways of interacting with our students, which can be beneficial in the long run.

What we need to be good coaches?

• Active listening: coaching is first and foremost about listening. And at first this can be very hard, especially for those of us in the habit of filling all the silences. But soon enough I found out I cannot do my job as a coach if I don’t create the space for my students to reflect and speak out;

• Reflection: the key to effective coaching is reflection: helping students create a habit to reflect. This may mean providing them with some structure, some prompts, creating intentional moments of reflection, training some reflection techniques (oral and written), etc;

• Flexibility: as we work with students one-on-one (as is the case for all the three roles I talk about here), it’s important to stay flexible, both in our planning and in the ways we need to support our students.

Academic advising

One role that may not immediately come to mind in relation to teaching is that of an academic advisor. This essentially means guiding students in their journey through the curriculum and helping them plan their studies. I only started in this role this year and I must say I find it a privilege to witness and support the development of young minds (19 year old first year students) by helping them build their curriculum, explore their options and find focus. It makes me wish I had someone like that back when I started studying. So if you are offered such a role, I would warmly suggest you don’t hesitate and take it, it can be unexpectedly rewarding. Why?

• It gives us the opportunity to examine the entire curriculum of a programme (unfortunately a rare opportunity as we tend to operate in our bubbles) and evaluate its coherence (or lack thereof);

• It enables us to see the learning journey from the perspective of students, something very valuable that can be put to great use in our teaching and learning design;

• It’s a chance to help students put their studies into perspective, linking them to their interests and passions but also to potential career paths.

What we need to be good academic advisors?

• Good insights into the curriculum: in order to be able to advise students we need to know the curriculum well, as well as all the study rules and regulations;

• Bird’s eye view: your added value as an academic advisor is the fact that you can provide insights that connect academic choices to students’ interests and skills as well as the careers they aspire to; here I find that I use a lot my own experience so don’t be afraid to use yours;

• Empathy is key in this role. When advising students we need to be able to imagine ourselves in their shoes. Open and honest dialogue go a long way.

* Communication skills a well as experience apply to all three roles.

To sum up: “to teach” is more than “to instruct”. It’s also about guiding, listening, advising, supporting.

Teaching also means walking alongside our students, invested in their success.