U21 Educational Innovation – Case Studies
Four areas of focus within Educational Innovation developed following the U21 Educational Innovation Symposium in 2022. Following a call across the network for colleagues interested in participating in themed sub-cluster groups, small pilot groups were established with representative from several geographically diverse member universities.
These groups have been working to develop resources and collaborations to provide leading, innovative support to U21 member universities. Each group has a particular focus:
Learning Spaces and Environments Group – supporting colleagues across the network to share good practice for developing and utilising learning spaces and associated pedagogy to therefore to be at the forefront of international learning spaces development & approaches.
Learning Analytics Group – supporting staff and students to understand how to use learning analytics effectively to aid student learning and teaching staff professional development.
Learning Across the Curriculum through Campus Museums and Art Galleries Group – creating a showcase of innovative responses to the challenges facing research-intensive universities, focussing on the unique opportunities for enrichment of teaching & learning in campus museums and galleries. The group are considering the development of Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) through artefacts from U21 Campus Museums and Art Galleries.
The groups are looking to expand their membership so please indicate below which group you may be interested in joining or nominating a colleague for.
U21 Learning Spaces and Environments Case Studies
The Birmingham Institute of Forest Research (BIFoR) aims to provide fundamental science, social science and cultural research of direct relevance to global forested landscapes.
KU Leuven developed a hybrid classroom based on its Technology-Enhanced Collaborative Learning research project (TECOL) which ran from 2016 till 2018 and the LECTURE+ research project which started in 2017 and ended in 2019.
As a multi-campus university, KU Leuven is already for many years committed to implement multilocation education on its various campuses. As a result of increased demand in 2020, KU Leuven explored feasible and affordable ways to scale up this offering.
Following on from a rollout of MS Teams across all University teaching rooms during the summer of 2020 an initiative to install a dedicated Microsoft Teams rooms (MTR) system in one of the larger lecture theatres has been recently completed.
The Hong Kong University Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) decided to address the challenges of (synchronous) hybrid teaching. At the heart of this re-design is an effort to embrace all that has been learnt during campus closures and remote, online instruction (Raes, 2021).
U21 Learning Analytics case studies
UCD LEAP uses Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) activity to attain engagement insights and reach out to provide support to students who may be struggling, assisting transition to university life. The aim is to assist institutions with optimising and deploying student support resources.
The progress dashboard will help students gain a better understanding of their academic situation. The application is aimed at students in the milestone system who are following a regular bachelor’s programme.
This video demonstrated the Learning Analytics Dashboard developed by NUS for teaching staff to understand the progress of students in their class.
U21 Learning Through Campus Museums and Art Galleries Case Studies
The U21 mission strongly suggests that museums and collections are able to contribute to “respectful public debate” through knowledge produced in research, teaching and meaningful public collaboration. Colleagues across a number of U21 universities have prepared a showcase of innovative responses to the challenges facing research-intensive universities, focussing on the unique opportunities for enrichment of teaching & learning in campus museums and galleries. Click on the pins in the map hear to see the case studies.