This talk is arranged under the CHEF project GO:IT

The future of Higher Education is about forging connections in many different ways and this session will explore three new directions of HE based on this theme.

1. Global Online Inter-university Teaching (Hughes & Nørgård, forthcoming) in which students and staff from different universities (here Aarhus University and University College London) together run online teaching exchange webinars, tutorials, and feedback sessions. Because these events are held as online dialogues, staff and students can interact between partnership institutions on a resource free exchange basis with no need for time-consuming and costly contracts or travel expenses. This organic approach stimulates innovation and collaboration in teaching and encourages students to have international outlook as well as dialogic collaboration with people beyond their own classroom and campus.
2. Connected Curriculum initiative at UCL (Fung & Carnell, forthcoming) which aims to enable students to connect both globally and locally and present their research to new audiences. The Connected Curriculum is at the core of UCL’s  20-year institutional strategy (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/education-initiatives/connected-curriculum).  Here, we will discuss how modular curricula can make it difficult for learners to understand how their research skills are developing and how bridging devices that give these curricula coherence are needed. The overarching vision of the Connected Curriculum will be presented as well as a concrete study of different approaches to establishing such a research throughline in a programme and measuring student learning gain in key programme level attributes over time.
3. Participatory Academic Communities at AU (Aaen & Nørgård, 2015) which aims to invite students to become co-creators of and partners in HE and research as well as genuine contributors to both knowledge society and academic community through the delivery of projects and research that has an actual impact outside the classroom and campus. Examples of students setting up and partaking in conference, writing journal articles and working together with municipalities and companies both locally and internationally is presented. The goal is to enable students to participate as researchers, business project partners or citizens in society in academic ways.

Through the presentation of these three future directions in HE we invite the participants to engage with and discuss such higher education futures and their potentials, limitations and future directions.

Speakers

• Connected Curriculum Fellow Dr. Gwyneth Hughes, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK
• Associate Professor, Rikke Toft Nørgård Center for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Aarhus University, DK

The talk is followed by wine reception.

The event takes place at Aarhus University, Center for Teaching Development and Digital Media, Paludan Müllers Vej 48, 8200 Aarhus N. But the talk will also be streamed online and mirrored at Aarhus, University, Campus Emdrup, Tuborgvej 164, 2400 Copenhagen NV in room D118.