Looking for lecturers interested in courses for generic competences

“The goal is to create courses that give students generic competences, for example they should be able to respond flexibly to the various challenges they will face throughout their personal and working lives,” says Ola Winberg, coordinator for part three of ENLIGHT.

European Universities

ENLIGHT is an EU project involving Uppsala University and eight other universities. ENLIGHT is part of the EU European Universities initiative, the aim of which is to create a European Education Area. ENLIGHT has seven work packages but coordinator Ola Winberg is concentrating on work package three: Competences for European and global engagement (see also the links in the fact box below to other articles about ENLIGHT).
“Another goal is to encourage global engagement. The students should be able to look beyond regional and national borders and see themselves as global citizens and thus feel solidarity with and a sense of responsibility for people all over the world.”

Joint course

A course organised by the University of Groningen will be one way of working with these issues. The idea is for students from all the ENLIGHT universities to attend the course.
“The goal is to create a course that prioritises students’ capacities to contribute to sustainable, equitable solutions to contemporary problems and challenges,” says Ola Winberg. “The number of course participants will be small at first, but will then grow. The lecturers for the course will be recruited from all the ENLIGHT universities. So the course is also intended to function as an opportunity for professional development for university lecturers.”

Teacher education is key

The development of an internationalised teacher education programme is an important component that will give teacher education students better opportunities to study abroad, and so that the students will get exposure to more international components in their courses and collaborations at their home universities than they do currently.

Important for lecturers and researchers to become involved

Ola Winberg explains that there are good reasons and good opportunities for lecturers and researchers to get involved in this part of ENLIGHT.
“Lecturers will have the opportunity to develop their teaching skills in interactions with colleagues from other countries and student groups that include participants from a range of universities. Researchers will have the opportunity to contribute their research findings to the development of courses and to do this in partnership with colleagues from the other ENLIGHT universities.”

Ola Winberg also adds that ENLIGHT can function as a base for new research and new research collaborations, and he hopes that interested lecturers will get in touch.

What will you be doing as coordinator?
“My role as coordinator here will be to support the organisation of courses run by Uppsala University and find interested lecturers with the right skills. I will also contribute knowledge about how international teacher education can be shaped so that it meets the requirements on teachers in Sweden.”