Innovative pedagogies refer to novel, forward-thinking approaches to teaching and learning that challenge traditional educational paradigms (Peterson et al., 2018). These methodologies often leverage modern technologies, incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives, and prioritize student-centred learning experiences (Paniagua & Istance, 2018). They are based on the contemporary perspectives on what the human being is and should be, taking into account well-being, relations with the environment, cognitive, social and emotional aspects - in the classroom and beyond. At their core, innovative pedagogies aim to cultivate critical thinking, creativity, and adaptability in learners, preparing them for the complexities of a rapidly evolving global landscape.

The role of innovative pedagogies in education is multifaceted and profound. They serve as catalysts for transforming the learning environment from a passive, lecture-based model to an active, engaging, open, and collaborative space. By emphasizing experiential learning, problem-solving, and real-world applications, these approaches bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical skills. Moreover, innovative pedagogies often integrate emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and data analytics, to personalize learning experiences and provide immediate feedback, thereby enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the educational process.

The benefits of implementing innovative pedagogies are numerous and far-reaching. Firstly, they foster increased student engagement and motivation by making learning more relevant, interactive, and enjoyable. This heightened engagement often leads to improved retention of information and deeper understanding of complex concepts. Secondly, innovative pedagogies promote the development of crucial 21st-century skills, including digital literacy, critical thinking, collaboration, and adaptability. These skills are increasingly valued in the modern workforce and are essential for navigating the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Lastly, by encouraging creativity and independent thinking, innovative pedagogies help cultivate a lifelong love of learning, empowering students to become self-directed learners capable of adapting to new knowledge and technologies throughout their lives. Overall, these pedagogies aim to make learning more engaging, relevant, and impactful by connecting it to real-world issues, leveraging new technologies, promoting student agency, and providing more personalized and immersive experiences.

A group of scientists from The Open University developed a series of yearly reports, from 2012 to date, titled "Innovative Pedagogies" (Kukulska-Hulme et al.), in which they describe the most outstanding didactic innovations, with value for learning and for becoming, inspirational for teachers in the first place, but equally for educational managers and policy makers. The reports highlight several emerging pedagogical approaches that leverage technology and new ways of thinking about learning. For example, hybrid models combine face-to-face and online learning in flexible ways, allowing students to participate through multiple modes. Dual learning scenarios connect classroom learning with workplace experiences, using technologies like virtual and augmented reality to bridge these environments. Microcredentials offer short, focused learning experiences to develop specific skills, often related to career advancement. The pedagogy of autonomy aims to develop students' capacity for self-directed learning. Several approaches specifically leverage artificial intelligence, including conversational AI tutors, AI-enhanced multimodal writing, and intelligent adaptive textbooks.

Other innovative approaches focus on addressing key societal challenges. Climate action pedagogy integrates environmental topics across the curriculum and empowers students to take action on climate issues. Pedagogies of peace promote conflict resolution and global citizenship. Speculative worlds use fiction, games and technology design to imagine more equitable futures, especially for marginalized groups.

The reports also discuss ways to make learning more immersive and experiential, such as through extended reality simulations, video game-based language learning, and embodied explorations of scientific models.

The analysis of the reports from the period 2019-2024 reveals that the general trend regarding the educational process increasingly incorporates innovations that are based on digital technologies or are "determined" by them, not being possible 10-20 years ago. We synthetically take over some of these pedagogical proposals, with the conviction that they can constitute a basis for reflection for teachers and a starting point in developing their own pedagogical approaches that work effectively in particular contexts:

Learning with robots: Helping teachers free their time for teaching (2019)

Dialogic learning forms a cornerstone of effective education, with adept educators regularly engaging their students in meaningful discourse. While these interactions are time-intensive, the advent of intelligent software assistants and robots is reshaping the landscape of what can be accomplished in educational settings. These technological aids offer unprecedented opportunities to enhance the learning experience.

One notable application of these AI-powered tools is their ability to serve as ever-present conversational partners for learners, facilitating deeper understanding through continuous dialogue. Additionally, these systems can alleviate the burden on teachers by swiftly addressing common inquiries and assisting with assessment tasks. This reallocation of responsibilities allows educators to focus their efforts on uniquely human aspects of teaching, such as exercising nuanced judgment and providing emotional support to students.

The potential of these technologies extends beyond mere assistance, as robots are now developing the capacity to learn through interactive exchanges with human tutors. As their ability to comprehend human communication improves, this approach could revolutionize skill-based assessments. The integration of such advanced AI systems in education not only augments the learning process but also paves the way for more personalized and efficient educational experiences, ultimately transforming the roles of both learners and educators in the digital age.

Pedagogies using AI tools: Using AI tools such as ChatGPT to support teaching and learning (2023)

The sophisticated generative AI systems, capable of producing human-like text and images, are being rapidly integrated into various educational settings. They can function as personal tutors, collaboration facilitators, study aids, or exploratory tools, offering individualized support, enhancing group work, aiding comprehension, and enabling data exploration.

The impact of AI in education extends beyond generative tools, encompassing chatbots and artificial assistants that can enhance language learning, offer personalized guidance, and support cognitive processes. In this context, it becomes very important to train students in their effective and responsible use, and also to reconsider traditional assessment methods to accommodate the capabilities of these new technologies.

Using chatbots in learning: Using educational dialogues to improve learning efficiency (2021)

Chatbots are emerging as valuable tools in education, offering text or voice-based interfaces to interact with learners. They can answer questions, guide students, and assist with problem-solving, providing support when teachers are unavailable. Advanced chatbots utilize artificial intelligence to comprehend human language, voice, and behaviour, enabling more sophisticated interactions.

These digital assistants offer several advantages, including immediate problem diagnosis and personalized interventions. They can create immersive learning environments and initiate supportive conversations tailored to individual needs. Research suggests that learners may feel more comfortable expressing themselves to chatbots, free from fear of human judgment.

Chatbots are particularly promising in addressing the challenge of maintaining high-quality education at scale. By collecting data from interactions and learner behaviours, they can offer highly personalized support. This not only enhances the learning experience but may also help reduce educators' workloads, allowing them to focus on more complex aspects of teaching.

As chatbot technology continues to evolve, it has the potential to significantly transform educational support and personalization, complementing traditional teaching methods and expanding access to individualized learning assistance.

Learning in conversation with generative AI: A dialogic, real-time method of learning (2024)

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools, exemplified by ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, have emerged as powerful facilitators of dialogic learning, emulating Socratic questioning techniques to provide real-time guidance and answers. These AI systems effectively serve as round-the-clock virtual tutors, offering immediate assistance with academic tasks.

The conversational capabilities of GenAI have significantly enhanced interactive learning experiences through immersive simulations and role-playing scenarios. These features prove particularly valuable in areas such as language acquisition, professional skill development, and critical thinking exercises. For instance, applications like Duolingo Roleplay leverage GenAI to create realistic language practice scenarios, while similar technologies can be employed to simulate job interviews or medical diagnostic processes, providing students with practical, hands-on learning experiences.

For educators, GenAI presents a powerful tool for creating educational resources through iterative prompting and critical evaluation. The integration of GenAI in education also brings forth challenges, including varying levels of student engagement and the need for AI literacy to foster productive dialogue and critical assessment of AI-generated responses, which may occasionally contain inaccuracies or biases. Furthermore, issues of unequal access to advanced GenAI models and privacy concerns must be addressed as these technologies continue to shape the landscape of learning and engagement, calling for ongoing evaluation and adaptation in educational practices.

AI-enhanced multimodal writing: Extending multimodal authoring and developing critical reflection (2024)

Enabling students to seamlessly integrate diverse forms of expression like images, videos, voice-overs, and music alongside traditional text is more and more affordable, as AI tools are constantly evolving. The AI-enhanced multimodal writing is an approach that sparked new ways of thinking and planning for educators, who are exploring its potential through innovative projects such as environmental advocacy campaigns. Students are using AI to reinterpret stories or create original artworks, iteratively refining their prompts to achieve desired results. This process encourages deeper engagement with the subject matter and promotes a more nuanced understanding of how to communicate ideas across different media. Thus, the use of AI in multimodal writing is fostering critical thinking and creativity in the classroom.

However, educators must grapple with issues of equitable access to AI tools, ethical concerns surrounding algorithmic biases, and potential copyright infringements. This shift is prompting educators to place greater emphasis on reflective practices and ethical considerations when integrating AI into their curricula.

Intelligent textbooks: Making reading engaging, ‘smart’ and comprehensive (2024)

Intelligent textbooks promise to reshape education by offering more effective, personalized learning experiences, using AI to adapt content in real-time based on reader behaviour. These digital tools offer interactive features like automated question answering and adaptive content delivery, providing tailored learning paths and immediate feedback. Benefits include optimised comprehension and engagement, improved learning efficiency and student satisfaction, especially in fields like computer science, where interactive elements enhance understanding. Intelligent textbooks represent a transformative approach to education, potentially facilitating lifelong learning for diverse learners worldwide.

Multimodal pedagogy: Enhancing learning by diversifying communication and representation (2023)

This method has gained traction in response to social and technological shifts that have challenged the traditional dominance of text-based educational practices. The approach aims to provide students with opportunities to learn and demonstrate their learning through multiple modes, and to develop their knowledge and skills in multimodal literacy. The proposal is modelled on the current generous possibilities: a learning path should combine various formats (text, image, audio, video) and various types of representations (e.g. schematic/ didactic versus real-life/ authentic materials). Where possible, a course based predominantly on verbal representation (oral/ written text) can have audio/ audio-video alternatives, so that the student can choose the one that suits them better. Furthermore, students develop a deeper understanding how the combination of different modes of communication like words, images, sounds, and gestures creates new meaning, and how the medium itself influences the distribution and interpretation of these modes.

By adopting multimodal pedagogy, educators can better prepare students for diverse workplace communication demands and foster alternative ways of understanding and expressing knowledge. This approach has shown promise in improving accessibility, inclusivity, student engagement, comprehension, and knowledge retention. Practical applications of multimodal pedagogy range from classroom activities that help students visualize complex three-dimensional structures to exercises involving acting out sound pathways and creating multimodal academic arguments. Multimodal pedagogy also involves the development of new assessment techniques to adequately assess multimodal learning outcomes.

Virtual studios: Hubs of activity where learners develop creative processes together (2019)

Virtual studios have evolved from a conceptual idea to a practical reality. They are digital environments used for creating and producing media content, primarily serving as interactive, experiential, constructive learning spaces in education. A studio is typically a hub of activity, with half-formed ideas and concepts articulated as sketches, models, and artefacts. Thus, it's crucial to recognize that virtual studios are not merely online replicas of physical spaces; they possess unique educational merits and open up novel opportunities for learning and collaboration. With the latest advancements in IA, the studio concept is undergoing a transformation, giving rise to diverse forms in educational settings.

Enriched realities: Extending learning with augmented and virtual reality (2021)

By providing dynamic, interactive learning environments, enriched reality technologies, particularly augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are enhancing education and training methods, offering unique opportunities for experiential learning and skill development that were previously unattainable in traditional educational settings. The technology's accessibility has improved, with basic AR and VR experiences now possible using smartphones and reliable internet connections.

AR overlays information on real surroundings, while VR creates immersive 3D environments. These technologies enable shared experiences for remote learners, offering engaging and memorable learning opportunities beyond traditional classroom settings.

AR and VR find applications in various fields, including medical training, safety instruction, and teacher education. These enriched realities allow students to explore environments that would otherwise be inaccessible, dangerous, or impossible to visit, such as Mars or the interior of chemical substance. They facilitate interactive group work, enabling students to manipulate virtual objects and navigate settings collaboratively. This engagement aids in concept understanding, skill practice, and task performance.

Metaverse for education: Educational opportunities through fully immersive 3D environments (2023)

The Metaverse is an emerging concept that envisions a three-dimensional virtual reality iteration of the internet, enabling users to interact with one another through digital avatars. This immersive digital realm comprises interconnected 3D environments, such as digital campuses for learning experiences or science labs for virtual experiments, typically accessed via virtual reality (VR) headsets, where users can gather to collaborate and engage in various permitted activities.

Exploring scientific models from the inside: Rich embodied experiences supported by extended reality and AI (2024)

Embodied learning integrates physical movement and environmental interaction into education, expanding students' learning resources. Extended reality (XR) technologies create immersive environments where students interact with digital representations of scientific phenomena, allowing hands-on exploration of complex models. Artificial Intelligence enhances this approach by analysing multimodal data from these interactions, providing insights into student engagement and learning processes. This combination enables teachers to offer personalized feedback and guide reflective discussions, deepening students' conceptual understanding.

Embodied learning through XR and AI creates rich, interactive environments that make abstract concepts tangible and engaging, bridging theory and practice, significantly enhancing comprehension of complex sciences.

Assessments through extended reality: Harnessing immersion to demonstrate and develop skills (2024)

Simulation-based learning is gaining traction as an assessment tool, offering learners the opportunity to engage with realistic scenarios and experience the immediate consequences of their decisions. Extended reality (XR) technologies, including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), are at the forefront of this trend, providing immersive environments for evaluating and developing practical skills. These technologies create a powerful sense of presence and agency, allowing for authentic assessment of complex procedural knowledge without real-world risks or logistical limitations.

Skills assessment through XR is embraced by various industries, from healthcare to vocational training. For instance, virtual environments are being used to evaluate hazard recognition in construction or customer service skills in hospitality. Effective XR assessment design incorporates multiple data sources, begins with low-stakes activities to acclimate learners, and ensures alignment with learning outcomes.

XR assessments offer significant advantages over traditional methods, providing detailed analytics and fostering reflective learning experiences, offering deeper insights into learner performance and facilitating more comprehensive skill development.

Speculative worlds: Imagining and designing for a more equitable future (2024)

By employing techniques like world-building in speculative fiction and collaborative technology design, these pedagogies offer to students, and particularly to marginalized individuals, innovative pathways to engage, to reshape their worlds, and to explore alternative realities. The approach recognize that marginalized communities face significant barriers to education, which are often compounded by factors such as poor health, social exclusion, and lack of resources.

At the heart of speculative pedagogies is the idea that individuals can experiment with actions and personas beyond their everyday experiences, transcending limitations of time, space, and perspective. Technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality play a crucial role in facilitating these creative processes, enabling the integration of marginalized communities' cultural backgrounds into new virtual spaces and fostering a sense of belonging.

While speculative pedagogies offer promising ways for marginalized individuals to envision equitable futures, express their identities, and explore their societal roles, implementation faces several challenges. These include digital exclusion, socioeconomic barriers, and potential biases in AI models.

Seeing yourself in the curriculum: Pedagogies enabling students to see themselves in the curriculum (2023)

There is a growing movement among students to see themselves, their histories, and their backgrounds represented in educational curricula, materials, and approaches. This push for representation is closely tied to the decolonial movement, which aims to address the ongoing impacts of colonialism on societies worldwide. A key goal of this movement is to transform education systems to better reflect the diverse cultures, experiences, and histories of all students.

The ”decolonial approach” in education involves a process of unlearning biases and ideas rooted in colonial history, while simultaneously incorporating knowledge from authentic local contexts. This includes integrating previously marginalized indigenous knowledge and philosophies into educational frameworks. Indigenous pedagogies embed local stories, perspectives, and knowledge into core teaching and learning practices.

In digital learning environments, various means can be used to apply this educational principle – creating avatars that embody the models/ aspirations of the main segments of the platform's audience (clothing, attitude/ behaviour, language/ manner of addressing), establishing rewards from the familiar horizon and which have meaning (similar to those in real life and/or in the games most frequented by the training participants of the respective age/ from a certain environment), and so on.

The content of learning is closer to what learners are, know, do, can do, want. Furthermore, these developments signify a call for fundamental changes in how educational institutions operate. They represent a concerted effort to address long-standing power imbalances within education systems, challenging traditional structures and methodologies to create more equitable and representative learning environments for all students.

Making thinking visible: Opening windows into student learning (2019)

Making thinking visible is a powerful approach to enhance learning effectiveness. It encourages students to externalize their thought processes through goal-setting, problem-solving steps, and annotations. This practice aligns with the constructivist view of learning, where students actively create knowledge through interactions with tools and resources. Technology-enhanced assessment systems further support this approach by prompting students to show their work, receive automated feedback, and engage in discussions with teachers and peers during learning activities.

By making thinking visible, teachers gain valuable insights into students' conceptual understanding, progress, and potential areas of misunderstanding. This transparency allows for more targeted instruction and support. The visible records of students' personal and social learning also serve as resources for reflection, enabling both students and teachers to track progress towards mastery of a topic. Ultimately, this approach fosters a more interactive, reflective, and personalized learning experience, benefiting both students and educators.

Corpus-based pedagogy: Using authentic language data to support (language) teaching and learning (2021)

In recent years, corpus-based pedagogy has gained traction due to advancements in computer science that facilitate information extraction from more and more accessible, diverse, and adaptable corpora, such as examining how specific words are employed. In this approach, a large base of specialized resources (text and/or other media) are used by students in educational situations to obtain authentic data and to design and adjust real-life instructions/ tasks.

Students can independently access online corpora or do so with guidance from their instructors. They can analyse their own language use by comparing their linguistic choices with patterns and structures found in a corpus. This process of retrieving and analysing language use in context provides learners with a research-based understanding of language forms and functions.

The corpus-based approach has wide-ranging applications, including learning languages for various scientific domain-related purposes, teaching text analysis, supporting genre-specific writing, and evaluating existing textbooks to identify their characteristics and suggest improvements.

Pedagogy of care in digitally mediated settings: Prioritising the well-being and development of students (2023)

The pedagogy of care is an educational philosophy that emphasizes empathy and the development of learners in a nurturing, supportive, and equitable learning environment, thus contributing to students' self-esteem, well-being, and engagement. It’s a holistic perspective on education that balances academic achievement with the development of empathetic, well-rounded individuals.

This approach encompasses four key elements: modelling, dialogue, practice, and confirmation. In digitally mediated settings, educators can implement a pedagogy of care through practical measures aimed at creating a welcoming atmosphere, empathizing with students, and addressing their needs effectively. Complementarily, in conventional/ F2F educational settings, teachers can use digital resources and tools to adjust the learning climate and to provide sustained, high-quality care for their students. However, educators adopting a pedagogy of care may face personal challenges, including exhaustion and burnout. This highlights the necessity of incorporating self-care practices for educators and other learning support professionals.

Pedagogies of the home: Understanding the home as a place for cultural learning (2022)

The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the significance of the home as a learning environment and its broader educational and cultural relevance. 'Pedagogies of the home' is a concept distinct from traditional homeschooling, focusing on the informal teaching and learning practices that naturally occur within domestic settings, as well as culturally specific learning methods often rooted in local communities.

With this understanding, educators should be more able to select culturally relevant materials for students, as well as to influence or to choose their learning proposals (e.g. for homework or for individual/ independent learning tasks), more or less close to students’ habits and preferences. Thus, home pedagogies can also serve as a powerful tool to challenge educational norms, including prevailing perceptions about certain student groups' dropout rates or the impact of historical segregation and cultural deprivation on academic achievement.

As the boundaries between formal and informal learning continue to blur, particularly in the wake of global events like the pandemic, the concept of home pedagogies offers a fresh perspective on education. It encourages a more holistic view of learning that extends beyond traditional classroom settings and recognizes the rich, diverse experiences students bring from their home environments.

Challenge-based learning: Rising to challenges to benefit individuals and societies (2023)

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is an educational approach that engages learners through structured challenges, comprising three stages: engage, investigate, and act. It promotes active participation and real-world problem-solving, incorporating authentic use of technology, documenting, storytelling, and community involvement. While similar to project-based and problem-based learning, CBL has unique features that can make learning exciting and potentially impactful on society. However, it presents challenges in implementation, including time management, unpredictable outcomes, and assessment complexities. Adopting CBL may require additional resources, such as adequate staff, technical support, and collaborative spaces, which can limit its widespread application. Simplified versions of CBL can be employed by making use of (existing) digital educational resources such as escape rooms.

Relational pedagogies: Working relationally in and across disciplinary and professional boundaries (2023)

Inspired from the current professional settings, in which (relational) work involves communication that builds connections across diverse entities, including humans, materials, artefacts, technologies and the natural habitat, the relational pedagogies emphasize the importance of relationships in education, viewing them as essential for effective learning, teaching, and professional collaboration. Relational expertise is the ability to recognize and engage with others' knowledge while confidently applying one's own competences. This expertise is crucial in rapidly evolving fields addressing global challenges. Ultimately, relational pedagogies develop versatile capacities for relational work applicable in various contexts.

Entangled pedagogies of learning spaces: Connecting technology, pedagogy and all elements of a learning context (2023)

Entangled pedagogies acknowledge the complex interplay between technology, pedagogy, and learning environments, moving beyond the debate of which drives the other, focusing rather on understanding their mutual influence and interconnectedness. The concept of orchestration is key, where educators strategically integrate tools and design activities to guide learning effectively. In hybrid flexible settings (hyflex), entangled pedagogies promote collaboration across diverse learning spaces, requiring meticulous planning to address multiple contexts. The use of AI tools exemplifies this entanglement, raising ethical and critical evaluation concerns. By embracing this approach, educators are encouraged to consider the purposes and contexts of learning, recognizing how they are shaped by the intricate relationship between learning spaces, pedagogical approaches, and technological tools.

Watch parties: Watching videos together, whatever the time or place (2022)

Watch parties are a collaborative online learning method where participants from diverse locations collectively engage with video content that can be recorded or live (broadcasted). These events can include pre-, during, and post-viewing activities such as group discussions or learning tasks. Research indicates that watch parties can foster greater social engagement than traditional face-to-face teaching. They are versatile, used across various educational settings from formal schooling to professional development, and can be organized informally or integrated into formal curricula. Watch parties utilize various social platforms, with many online service and media providers now offering features to support this learning approach. This method effectively combines the convenience of remote learning with the benefits of social interaction, creating a dynamic and engaging educational experience for participants worldwide.

Influencer-led education: Learning from education influencers on social media platforms (2022)

Edu-influencers are emerging as a new phenomenon in education, adapting the social media influencer model to learning contexts. These online personalities use engaging, multi-sensory content to attract large followings outside traditional educational institutions. They're reshaping how learners choose educational content and providers, blurring lines between entertainment and learning. While edu-influencers offer free, accessible content, concerns exist about potential misinformation and exploitation of followers. Social media platforms' motivations in promoting certain content may not align with educational best interests. Despite these concerns, educators are exploring ways to leverage influencers' popularity and practices to enhance formal online education and increase accessibility.

This trend reflects a shift in how information is disseminated and consumed in the digital age, challenging traditional educational models while offering new opportunities for engagement and learning. As a handy first step, short filmed sequences with well-known personalities can be used to capture attention or as a starting point/pretext for an educational situation.

Massive open social learning: Free online courses based on social learning (2014)

Massive open social learning integrates social networking principles into massive open online courses (MOOCs), enhancing the value of the learning experience as more participants engage, fostering collaborative discussions and shared projects that build upon collective knowledge and experiences. If well chosen, learning pathways appropriately complement the formal curriculum, providing students with opportunities to diversify their sources of knowledge and approaches to learning.

The transient nature of online interactions poses a challenge, as learners often connect briefly and solely through digital means. To address this, several strategies have been proposed. These include connecting conversations directly to learning materials, forming ephemeral discussion groups among simultaneously online learners, and implementing peer review systems for assignments. Additionally, techniques borrowed from social media and gaming are being employed to strengthen learner connections and engagement. These methods include allowing learners to follow one another, implementing rating systems for discussion contributions, and introducing competitive elements through quizzes and learning challenges.

By incorporating these various approaches, massive open social learning seeks to create a dynamic, interconnected learning environment that capitalizes on the collective power of its participants, despite the constraints of online interaction.

Hybrid models: Maximising learning flexibility and opportunities (2022)

The hybrid approach blends face-to-face sessions with online learning, creating a single coherent educational experience. After the pandemics, new hybrid models are emerging, offering students the flexibility to alternate between in-person and online participation, both synchronously and asynchronously. The ”open hybrid” model emphasizes individual lifelong learning for career development, while ”flexible hybrid” models expand engagement options within institutional settings. Flexible hybrid teaching requires specific infrastructure to ensure equitable participation for both in-person and online students. While technology is crucial, pedagogical considerations are equally important, focusing on engaging students through active learning and participation. These models aim to create a dynamic learning environment that accommodates diverse student needs and preferences, balancing the benefits of traditional classroom interactions with the accessibility and flexibility of online learning.

Dual learning scenarios: Connecting learning in classrooms and industry workplaces (2022)

Dual learning aims to synchronize classroom education with professional practices, bridging the gap between theory and workplace reality. The shift to remote work and learning during the Covid-19 pandemic has further emphasized the need for this alignment. Industry partners have critiqued traditional classroom teaching for its lack of relevance to real-world practices. To address this, educators must stay current with industry processes and technologies, while industry partners should contribute practical activities and support structures for educational institutions. A more collaborative approach to curriculum development, involving both academic and industry stakeholders, is crucial. This integration allows dual learning scenarios to offer students valuable insights into future workplace challenges and provides industry with better-prepared graduates. By fostering this close partnership between education and industry, dual learning creates a more seamless transition from academic study to professional practice, ultimately benefiting both students and employers. In certain circumstances, under the (remote) supervision of an industry professional, simulations and AR/VR can take the place of professional contexts where the theoretical course finds a practical expression.

Pedagogies of microcredentials: Accredited short courses to develop workplace skills (2022)

This approach envisages optional, focused, small learning tracks complement the core curriculum, for added relevance, timeliness, practical skills or a broader perspective, added to a qualification or graduates’ skills profile. Microcredentials cater to diverse learners, including working professionals and those with other responsibilities. Due to their varied nature, microcredentials employ a range of pedagogical approaches, such as ePortfolios, competency-based learning, and case studies. Typically offered online, these courses must consider the needs of learners new to digital education, incorporating skills like self-regulation and effective online learning strategies alongside the primary course content.

Pedagogy of autonomy: Building capacity for freedom and independent learning (2022)

Autonomous learning focuses on developing educational strategies, methods, techniques and resources that foster learner independence. The pedagogy of autonomy supports individuals to develop effective study habits and techniques for self-directed learning, and to craft their own learning paths, balancing mandatory requirements with personal learning goals and strategies.

Digital tools play a significant role in enhancing learner autonomy, providing resources for students to take greater control of their educational journey. Exposed to this approach, learners can become more self-reliant and proficient in navigating their educational experiences, preparing them for lifelong learning in an ever-changing world.

Best learning moments: Positive mental states for enjoyable and effective learning (2021)

One of the most prominent current pedagogical recommendations, suitable in the landscape of more and more digitalised education by (re)connecting to the socio-emotional component, is the creation of opportunities for "best learning moments", resulting in relevant, efficient, useful, long-term learning.

Rooted in the psychological concept of cognitive absorption or "flow," these moments occur when learners are deeply engaged in appropriately challenging tasks, leading to full concentration and enjoyment. Such experiences can result in deep, memorable learning and high satisfaction levels.

To create these moments, educators can tap into student interests, pose challenging questions, and acknowledge individual differences. Technology-enhanced environments, including mobile devices, game-based learning, and virtual labs, can facilitate these experiences. Learning analytics can further support reflection and improve instructional design.

These optimal learning situations also present opportunities for unplanned "teaching moments", where educators can introduce new perspectives or concepts when students are most receptive. By focusing on creating and leveraging these best learning moments, digital education can become more engaging, effective, and emotionally resonant for learners.