CHARM-EU: Transnational Academic Development

All partner universities in the CHARM-EU alliance are facing similar challenges in the field of professional development for teachers and researchers, making inter-institutional collaboration important for addressing these collectively.

Professionals working at Teaching Centers of Partner Universities, departments of pedagogical innovation, and similar units came together and generated ideas for transnational collaboration.

Outcomes

1. Online community of practice between pedagogical departments, CTLs, etc.

The goal is to create a space for online collaboration and the exchange of materials between professionals working on academic development in the CHARM-EU partner universities. By combining online meetings with a collaborative space, participants aim to continue learning from one another and to make more systematic use of each other’s expertise. Universities contributing to this initiative include JMU, University of Bergen, Abo Academy, Trinity College Dublin, Eötvös Loránd University, and the University of Montpellier.

2. Mutual recognition of university teaching qualifications

Several partner universities already offer (mandatory) university teaching courses and qualifications. These qualifications often have consequences for academic careers in the university and provide a strong framework for the recognition of teaching in academia. The goal of collaborating on this topic is to compare the criteria and structures of these qualification pathways and find out whether their mutual recognition is possible. Several partner universities are involved in this comparative analysis: Barcelona, Bergen, Turku, and Utrecht.

Taken more broadly, mutual recognition between partner universities can serve as an example of cross-border recognition of teaching in Europe, potentially facilitating teaching mobility and wider recognition of teaching quality. This could incentivize partner universities that do not yet have such qualifications or recognition systems in place to consider adopting them and learning from existing practices.

3. Change makers in partner universities

The goal is to exchange knowledge on evidence-based institutional change and drive institutional change by bringing ‘changemakers’ together. The group proposes a programme in which experts from all partner universities support the changemakers and learn from each other.

4. Online international forum for teacher support

The goal of this idea is to collaborate on teacher support across our universities via an online forum. Through this approach, partner universities can use one another’s pedagogical expertise and work cohesively as a team. An inventory and mapping exercise on the potential role of GenAI in such a forum will be conducted, paving the way for a ‘GenAI buddy’ for academics, built on state-of-the-art research in (higher) education.

By Nataliia Lazebna and Annet van der Riet