Innovate in teaching to respond to a changing reality

Why do we talk about Innovative pedagogies in CIVIS? And why do we think it should be a transversal component of our educational offering? When it comes to education, "innovation" can be a misleading term: its meaning changes from one place to another and over time: what is new today will not be new tomorrow.

Talking about teaching innovation could give the false impression that what is new, just for the sake of being new, is more valuable than a traditional method, which is not true. The expression tends to divert attention from the essential issue: teaching is about facilitating learning. Sometimes it will require innovative methods and tools and sometimes not.

So why do we talk about innovative pedagogies in CIVIS? Because CIVIS is what is new. It is new from a global perspective, in the sense that European universities alliances emerge at a time of reconfiguration of the higher education space, which has to respond to the needs of an increasingly digital, intercultural and exposed to global challenges society. But it is also new in a very concrete sense, insofar as CIVIS represents an educational context of its own.