SPCS Innovations in Teaching

Adapted from Reform and Innovation in Higher Education: A Literature Review

• Shift from lecturer to facilitator
• Shift from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side”
• Helping students learn about and respect other cultures
• Helping students value diversity
• Helping students address the transitional challenges they face which are not typically part of a formal curriculum
• Linking and coordinating the curriculum with out-of-classroom experiences
• Facilitating group projects and active learning, using problem-oriented assignments
• Emphasis on interdisciplinary teaching and curriculum helps students understand connections between various ways of looking at the world through different disciplinary lenses
• Emphasis on examples and processes rather than memorizing facts
• Service learning builds empathy
• Faculty member as community builder
• Undergraduates involved in faculty research in similar way to graduate research assistants

Adapted from: 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age, Future of Learning 2030 & 10 Principles for the Future of Learning

• Learner-directed learning
• Decreasing role of “expert”
• Networked workplace
• Decreasing half-life of knowledge
• Growing complexity and expectations
• Rising life expectancy
• Following curiosity and creating meaning
• Continuous learning and adaptability
• Need for growing interdisciplinarity
• Increasing collaboration across borders and boundaries

Adapted from: The Future of Higher Education (Pew), The Future of Higher Education (Columbia), Student Engagement through Choice, Curiosity, and Interest: The Implicit Connections of Learning (Georgia), New Dynamics of Higher Education and Research for Societal Change and Development (UNESCO) & World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century: Vision and Action (UNESCO)

• Build an innovative and diverse knowledge society
• Use a new vision and paradigm of higher education, which should be student-oriented, catering to ever more diversified categories of people
• Respond to the social responsibility to advance our understanding of multifaceted issues
• Go beyond cognitive mastery of disciplines
• Develop divergent thinking which is necessary for creativity — the ability to see multiple answers and multiple ways of interpreting questions
• Provide solid skills for success in the present, and in the world of the future
• Promote critical thinking and active citizenship
• Aid students in learning from and with each other with the support of a faculty member “coach”
• Help students learn how to learn — Focus on ways to look at problems and solutions, rather than on facts
• Advance research, innovation and creativity
• Lead society in generating global knowledge to address global challenges
• Contribute to the education of ethical citizens
• Address different types of learners
• Meet students where they are, provide choice, an opportunity to follow curiosity and the ability to discover their passion
• Provide an active, technology-rich learning environment that appeals to the technology-connected learner who knows how to find information easily
• Maintain student connection and interaction, and individualized attention, even when students are not in the same room, using available technology and innovative teaching methods
• Use more visual learning tools like video to keep students engaged
• Adapt learning approaches quickly to changes in technology and in the world
• Place certain forms of content online, reserving more class time for discussion, inquiry and participatory activities
• Respond to and anticipate social needs
• Provide equitable access to technologies that are improving the ways in which knowledge can be produced, managed, disseminated, accessed and controlled
• Use new methods of testing that will promote not only powers of memory but also powers of comprehension, skills for practical work and creativity
• Invest in the training of faculty and staff in evolving teaching and learning systems
• Provide open access to scientific literature
• Provide access to both broad general education and targeted, career-specific education, often interdisciplinary, that equips individuals to live and work in a variety of changing settings
• Reinforce the University’s role of service to society, mainly through an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach in the analysis of problems and issues
• Help society, which is currently undergoing a profound crisis of values, transcend economic considerations and incorporate deeper dimensions of morality and spirituality
• Promote humanistic values and intercultural dialogue and cooperation
• Reflect international, regional and national dimensions in both teaching and research
• Aim at the creation of a new society — non-violent and non-exploitative
• Provide the opportunity for students to fully develop their own abilities with a sense of social responsibility, educating them to become full participants in democratic society and promoters of changes that will foster equity and justice
• Create new learning environments, ranging from distance education facilities to complete virtual higher education institutions and systems, capable of bridging distances and developing high-quality systems of education
• Create mutually beneficial partnerships with communities and civil societies to facilitate sharing of knowledge