HDS.Forum 2025

October 20–22, 2025

Thu, 23 October 2025, 12.00 - 1.00 pm

Arrival & registration

Thu, 23 October 2025, 1.00 - 2.15 pm

Welcome & Keynote: Across Difference: Intercultural Teaching & Learning (Anna Santucci)

What role does intercultural competence play in our teaching practice as inclusive educators across the disciplines? How do cultural awareness and critical engagement with difference intersect with our ability to design and facilitate equitable, transparently aligned learning- centered experiences that foster our students’ growth mindset, purpose, agency, and sense of belonging and mattering? This keynote will explore the meaning of individualization in the context of these key questions, exploring how intercultural skills relate to our ability to design and facilitate inclusive higher education environments.

Thu, 23 October 2025, 2.30 - 4.00 pm

Micro-Credentials – A Structured Path to Flexible Learning (Andrea Brose)

Micro-credentials are widely seen as a key instrument for enabling flexible and individualized learning pathways. In this session, we will take a critical look at the current state of development, practical applications, and challenges related to the implementation of micro-credentials across Europe. We will explore how standardized, digitally supported learning credentials can foster lifelong learning—and what is needed to ensure their recognition and impact.

Building on ECIU University’s leading role in developing micro-credentials within the Erasmus+ European Universities initiative, the workshop will also reflect on how micro-credentials and FLP approaches can contribute to shaping the future European Degree. While not based on joint degrees — the current core element of the European Degree label—FLP and micro-credential strategies can offer complementary models that help advance the goals of transnational European education by supporting learner mobility, modular recognition, and competence-driven qualification pathways.

Connected Communities | Open Exchange on Best & Worst Practices in International Teaching and Learning (Kristin Klein)

Plus best practise: Co-teaching in an international context (NN)

How can international collaboration in European university alliances truly enrich teaching and learning in higher education? This workshop introduces the concept of “Connected Communities”– dynamic, cross-university teaching and learning formats within the EUTOPIA alliance where researchers, educators, and students work together on shared topics, using common resources and collaborative practices. These flexible formats aim to spark innovative educational ideas, foster mutual learning and/or researching and place student engagement at the centre. Following a short introduction and hands-on examples of existing Connected Communities at TU Dresden, participants will dive into an open exchange: What makes international teaching/learning formats genuinely valuable – and what doesn’t? Together, we’ll reflect on and discuss these key questions:

• What conditions genuinely motivates staff and students to participate in or create international teaching and learning formats?

• What barriers or challenges are currently limiting deeper involvement in international learning/teaching projects – and what kind of support is helpful?

• What positive experiences or success stories and what failures can we learn from?This workshop is an invitation to share experiences, identify needs, and co-imagine next steps for meaningful, cross-alliances cooperation in higher education.

Truth & Power: Equality, Equity, and/or Justice? (Anna Santucci)

This workshop is an opportunity to connect with like-minded colleagues in interdisciplinary dialogue to explore the concepts of equity, diversity, and justice in our educational contexts, and collaboratively interrogate power dynamics within academia; participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own practice and spheres of influence, and share practical ideas and approaches for fostering meaningful change.

Student participation / EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group on “Learning and teaching to empower students (Stephen Rutherford*, Connie Pritchard, Helene Peterbauer and Nigel Francis; Moderation: Claudia Bade)

This workshop will focus around the outputs of a recent European University Association Thematic Peer Group (TPG) report on learning activities to empower students as active agents and partners in learning. The workshop will be led by the two co-leads of the group, and will share some of the findings of the TPG. In particular the workshop will discuss ways in which we can refine our teaching approaches to include students, and prepare them to be global citizens and agents of change - both during their courses and after graduation. Workshop participants will work collaboratively to identify ways in which they can reshape courses and teaching activities to engage students as partners and support the development of transferrable skills that will be of benefit post-graduation.

Thu, 23 October 2025, 4.30 - 6.00 pm

Joint Study Programmes (NN)

Study together, design together: Developing study programs in alliances: What does it take to design and successfully implement study programs across universities? This session is dedicated to the strategic, organizational and didactic challenges of developing joint study programmes in university alliances. A project teams will provide insights into curriculum development processes, recognition procedures, coordination and governance. Success factors, stumbling blocks and perspectives for sustainable, student-centered study programs - supported by a common vision and shared responsibility - will be discussed.

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Girona (Miquel Alsina Tarrés) and at the Faculty of Computer Science, TU Chemnitz (Sebastian Heil)

In recent years, a Teaching Innovation Group has been established within our faculty, bringing together lecturers from various undergraduate programs offered at the center who are interested in the CBL methodology. This talk will present the main features of this pedagogical approach and provide examples of how it has been adapted and implemented in different courses, along with the outcomes observed.

Rethinking mobility - opportunities and integration in teaching as part of the European University Alliance Across (Cecile Sandten, Moderation: Benny Liebold)

International mobility is a central element of European university cooperation – especially within European university alliances such as Across. In order to shape mobility in a future- oriented way, central topics such as inclusion, sustainability, digital supplements (blended mobility) and the recognition of achievements must be given greater focus. In this session, we will discuss how physical, virtual and hybrid mobility formats can be meaningfully interlinked. A particular focus will be on the question of how mobility experiences can be embedded not only as a personal added value, but also as an integral part of curricular structures – for example through joint courses, transnational project work or digitally supported learning spaces. The aim is to further develop mobility as a form of learning and thus contribute to the quality and attractiveness of European higher education.

Students and teachers in discourse: How can individualization succeed in university teaching? (Teachers and students on the podium, Moderation: Susann Lippman)

Students and lecturers in dialog: Shaping individualization in university teaching - with the support of university didactics: Individualized teaching promises a better fit between learning opportunities and the needs of heterogeneous student groups – but also presents lecturerswith new challenges. In this session, students and lecturers will discuss together how individual learning paths can be meaningfully supported. Particular attention will be paid to the role of university didactic advice: What impulses, formats and structures are needed to implement individualization in a practical and sustainable way?

Thu, 23 October 2025, 6.30 - 7.30 pm

Leisure/European capital of cultural (city tour)

Thu, 23 October 2025, OPENING 7.30 pm

Conference Gathering

open to registered participants with completed payment (see conference registration for details)

Fri, 24 October 2025, Opening 9.00 am

Gallery Walk: Focus on teaching - alliances introduce themselves (Moderation: Claudia Bade, Robert Kordts (Uni Bergen))

Gallery Walk: University alliances in focus - Teaching. Learning. Shaping together. At the HDS.Forum 2025 we invite you to a gallery walk in which university alliances from Saxony and their international partners will present their projects, ideas and cooperations in the field of teaching and teaching development. Discover innovative models of cooperation, talk to committed lecturers and cooperation partners and be inspired by successful examples of joint teaching formats and strategies. The Gallery Walk offers space for exchange, networking and new impulses.

Fri, 24 October 2025, 10.00 - 11.30 am

Cooperation in teaching: HD Support (NN, Moderation: Ulrike Rada)

Teachers in focus: guidance, advice and support for cooperative teaching: How can cooperation in teaching succeed - and how can teachers be effectively supported? In this slot, actors from university didactics will present successful concepts, advisory formats and support structures that strengthen teachers in the development and implementation of cooperative teaching projects. The focus is on practical insights into higher education didactics support services, strategic partnerships and experiences from working with lecturers - for more quality, sustainability and exchange.

Didactic guidelines - joint development (Moderation: Anita Sekyra)

Higher education didactics in dialog: What we can learn from each other: How do university alliances design their higher education didactic guidelines - and what can be taken away from them for your own university? In this format, representatives from different universities will present their higher education didactics concepts, recommendations and development strategies in short pitches. The focus is on the exchange of common values, concrete implementations and the question: Which approaches deserve to be adopted or further developed? A moderated fishbowl discussion will then invite participants to explore ideas in greater depth and gather ideas for the further development of higher education didactic standards in alliances.

Campus Community Partnership (Service Learning) (Isabelle van der Bom, Moderation: Stefanie Troppmann)

Campus meets community: learning through engagement - service learning as a bridge between university and society: How can teaching promote social responsibility and inspire students to actively participate? This session will focus on teaching formats that combinesacademic learning with social engagement. Lecturers and partners from practice and civil society will show how service learning contributes to joint problem-solving, motivates students and creates sustainable cooperation between the university and the community. This is how teaching can have an impact beyond the campus. Best practise: As part of the “Project Management” course in the English Studies degree programme, and with support from the Service Learning initiative at Chemnitz University of Technology, a tandem language learning project was developed for the volunteers of Chemnitz European Capital of Culture 2025. Tandem learning is a method in which two people interested in each other's language work together in a relaxed setting, supporting each other's learning. In this project, predominantly international English Studies students were paired with German-speaking volunteers from Chemnitz 2025 to help improve their English skills and prepare them to welcome international visitors during the Capital of Culture year. Through workshops, regular tandem meetings, and interactive activities, the project fostered both language development and intercultural exchange in ways beyond expectation. Following overwhelmingly positive feedback, the tandem programme has now been run three times and is expected to continue and expand in the future.

Digital learning environments (Daniel Pietschmann, Daniel Potts and Fabian Taubert)

In order to enable cross-university collaboration in which joint teaching, learning, research and transfer can be realized, a sustainable digital learning and working environment is required. This shared digital environment should primarily contribute to communication, collaboration and co-creation for teaching, research and continuing education and, last but not least, meet high data protection standards. How the various requirements are realized in different learning and working environments is presented using the platform of the Across university alliance, a cross-university course management system and the establishment of a cross-university learning platform. A variety of questions regarding realization, challenges and parallels between the environments will be discussed in this session. Use of digital learning environment.

Fri, 24 October 2025, 11.30 am - 12.30 pm

Lunch & end of the HDS.Forum 2025