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A new methodology to help higher education professors upskill their teaching methods

February 24, 2022

A new methodology to help higher education professors upskill their teaching methods

Creativity and innovation nowadays are being recognised as the key players in addressing the economic, environmental and social challenges. As a result, higher education institutions have to provide their students with an education that will enable them to adapt to an increasingly globalised, competitive, diversified and complex working environment, in which creativity, the ability to innovate, entrepreneurship and a commitment to continuous learning are just as important as the specific knowledge of a given subject.

Yet, the number of students entering higher education is gradually declining, but the diversity of students is increasing. These factors pose a challenge to higher education professors. Today, more than ever before, higher education lecturers have to interact with students of different backgrounds and skill levels. 

Thus, the Erasmus+ project "Creativity for Higher Education Engineering Teacher" contributes and helps the teachers in engineering education to address these challenges. 

Innovative teaching methods for higher education teachers

The project "Creativity for Higher Education Engineering Teacher (CHET)" addressed the need to contribute to the professional development of teachers in engineering education across Europe. As a result, the newly published user-friendly platform helps teachers in engineering education to teach effectively by using creative techniques in their courses.

Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, the CHET project's consortium has delivered four intellectual outputs – CHET Curriculum Design and Development; learning content; CHET e-learning environment; and pilot programme with students. 

Creativity in teaching

All the materials created within the framework of the CHET project are placed in the interactive, multilingual and easy-to-use e-learning environment. The platform allows quick and easy access to a set of creativity techniques with theory and practice (examples, best practices, tips and hints) represented in a user-friendly way and adapted for mobile platforms.

The platform presents three courses for "Introduction of Creativity", four lessons on "Creativity and Technology in Teaching", and 30 "Creativity Techniques Toolkits". 

Overview of the courses

The first three courses introduce the higher education engineering teachers into creativity and creativity teaching. The course answers the questions like "What is Creative Thinking?" and "How to motivate engineering students to participate in Creativity inducing Activities?".

The second bundle of courses introduces engineering teachers to use technology with creativity techniques, methods, and tools. This package consists of courses like "Effective Technology Integration for Creative Teaching" and "Example Tools for Online and Creative Teaching". 

Last but not least – the final package of courses are all about creativity techniques. Starting from the "Zero Measurement" technique, known as initial assessment or starting point assessment, to the "Storytelling" and the "Dotmocracy" technique – for evaluating ideas in a democratic manner and under clear criteria, these sets of courses are for use in teaching activities. 

E-learning environment

The project's created e-learning environment is easy to navigate. All of the courses and techniques are structured according to criteria like the size of the group higher education teachers are working with, type of activity (classroom, collaborative team setting or self-work by students), type of class (theory or practice-based) and others. 

All the resources of the project are available in five different languages – English, Danish, Turkish, Spanish and Lithuanian – and can be accessed and downloaded free on the project website. 

Six institutions have formed the project's consortium group – Ege University (Turkey), being the coordinator and lead partner of the project, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania), Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain), EOLAS S.L. (Spain), University of Southern Denmark (Denmark), Avaca Technologies Consulting (Greece).

This project has been co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. 

 

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