Comments on Pedagogical Innovation Projects 2019

PIP 2019

Manuel João Costa Dean of Student Affairs and Pedagogical Innovation at the University of Minho. He is an Associate Professor and was coordinator of the Medical Education Unit, secretary of the Pedagogical Council and of the Medical Course Commission (2004-2018). His research activity has focused on innovation in pedagogical practices in higher education and on education in the health area, in particular in medical education, biochemistry and molecular biology.

I am very pleased to be associated with a new edition of the annual Pedagogical Innovation Projects of the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) writing these lines. The institutional availability of IST to promote and share the results of innovative projects in education marks a continuous and unequivocal commitment to pedagogical quality. Such sharing encourages the IST academy and inspires other higher education institutions, gaining particular importance in the current extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sudden need to find new solutions to teach in unexpected conditions of physical distance in institutions of higher education gave greater centrality to pedagogical innovation. As unpredictability is a constant in today’s fast-paced and connected world, pedagogical innovation is an increasingly precious capital of higher education institutions, which values these projects even more.

There are several positive effects of encouraging pedagogical innovation and the recognition of teachers who invest in it. From the outset, the direct targets of the projects are the covered students and the potential benefit from their learning. The more traditional ways of teaching will hardly add to the intrinsic motivation or refer to the diversity of contemporary student profiles. Additionally, on the teachers’ side, the reflective process inherent in the planning, implementation and evaluation of innovation, generating teaching skills applicable to other contexts and enriching the institution. The realization and dissemination of successive projects contributes to the appropriation of a lasting collective spirit of innovation necessary to ensure the continuous renewal of education.

This brochure testifies the success of the PIP Project at various levels. Right from the start, supporting projects that will not end in themselves. The portfolio of projects carried out includes new technological and pedagogical approaches that will remain available in the future. These are projects that provide strategies for years to come, suitable for the same curricular units or even for different ones. It therefore seems to win the competition’s bid to contribute to nurture new waves of pedagogical experiences. To a certain extent, support the implementation of these projects will benefit the academic experiences of successive student cohorts and will surely inspire more members of the faculty.

Also noteworthy is the fact that the projects focused on new pedagogical approaches promote more student involvement, seducing them, in some cases, into research practices and contact with industry and society. This greater interactivity in learning is an enhancing factor for learning success. In fact, the association of interactive teaching approaches with greater academic success (Freeman 2014) and with the narrowing of differences between academic performances of socio-demographically diverse students (Theobald 2020) is increasingly evident in various areas of knowledge.

It is also worth mentioning the presence of a multidisciplinary perspective in many projects. Some were even carried out in the context of curricular units of several courses, while others, carried out in a more restricted disciplinary context, originated practices or resources applicable in multiple disciplines. With the major issues of the present and the future having a multidisciplinary nature, these projects will contribute to bring disciplinary knowledge closer to relevant themes, thus contributing to the involvement of students in learning. A profound digital transformation is underway in today’s world. Therefore, the presence of projects focused on digital resources is to be welcomed. Recently, Portuguese higher education institutions have been increasingly faced with the urge to embrace digital transformation and the commitment to the development of digital skills for students and teachers. The integration of digital learning experiences promoted in some projects is good news. In this regard, it is worth highlighting the projects dedicated to the development of digital resources that can be generalized to the institution, which will provide IST with greater availability of digital resources for all its teaching.

In summary, the results presented here show the success of IST’s annual Pedagogical Innovation Projects and the maturity and interest of the teaching staff in what concerns pedagogical innovation. By committing itself to pedagogical innovation, IST continues to create conditions for pedagogical experimentation, something particularly valuable for anticipating solutions to complex problems such as those posed by the current pandemic COVID-19. This initiative certainly contributed not only to better training IST students, but also to better prepare IST teaching for pedagogical challenges, both current and future.

References Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410-8415.

Theobald, E. J., Hill, M. J., Tran, E., Agrawal, S., Arroyo, E. N., Behling, S., ... & Grummer, J. A. (2020). Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(12), 6476-6483.