NOVA is dedicating this first post-pandemic semester to pedagogical innovation and has a full schedule of meetings that seek, until the end of the year, to outline the University's strategy until 2025.
The initiative was kicked off last July in a webinar led by Terry Maguire, director of the National Forum for the Improvement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in Ireland, and João Amaro de Matos, vice-chancellor for Teaching and Internationalisation at NOVA.
"The launching of this academic year presents this unique opportunity, in the post-COVID context, to make a balance of the advances we have achieved in terms of pedagogical innovation, and to position, our university, in a competitive way in what will be the future of university education in Portugal and Europe", stresses the vice-rector of NOVA.
The schools and institutes of NOVA were then invited to produce videos showing their best practices and disclose how they've responded to the challenges of the last academic years, deeply affected by Covid-19.
There will also be a debate on how to integrate sustainability in academic programmes – a session included in the Sustainability Week programme, taking place this Tuesday, September 13th; and the awarding of the Prize for Pedagogical Innovation, inspired by the mission of fostering quality teaching, and publicly announced on NOVA Day.
Until the end of the year, the agenda includes workshops with students and teachers, to take place in September; the setting up of task forces, in mid-October, to identify the best practices and to find consensus; and the conference of the DocEnhance project, dedicated to the improvement of skills and integration in the existing doctoral programmes.
All these moments will contribute to outlining NOVA's pedagogical strategy, to be presented in December during the annual conference of QS - Reimagine Education. For the first time outside London, the event is hosted by NOVA Cairo, the first cross-border Portuguese campus.
Key dates
Session on Education and Sustainability - 13 September
Focus Group Teachers / Focus Group Students - 26 September
Pedagogical Innovation Workshop - 28 September
Pedagogical Innovation Prize - NOVA day
Task Forces by area of Knowledge - October
Writing of the Pedagogical Innovation Strategy - November
QS Reimagine Education Awards and Conference - 6/7 December
DocEnhance - 13 December