Pause to progress: Key principles for powerful higher education

Want to take a moment to reflect on your teaching practice?

This tip offers inspiration based on key principles of powerful higher education: focus on competence-based learning, actively engage your students, differentiate when needed, motivate, provide targeted feedback, and ensure high-quality assessment.

Focus on competence-based learning

The fundamental principle of higher education is that it should be "competence-based". Graduating students must possess clearly defined competences if they are to function successfully in an ever-changing labour market. You may still have some questions about competence-based education, which we can hopefully answer.

How can we ensure that students gradually acquire the right competences throughout the curriculum? One way to achieve this is by using learning trajectories. (see ECHO education tips "Learning trajectories", 2020 and ECHO education tip "Learning trajectories in practice", 2020).

Actively engage your students

An activating teaching approach is an effective one. But not every form of activation is equally successful. Activating your students is not something you can just do without preparation. Every teaching method you use and the way you activate is preferably the result of conscious choices. It's also important to consider your activation culture and how you can actively engage as many students as possible. And how do you involve a large group of students effectively?

Differentiate when needed

Students can differ from one another in many ways: they vary in age, come from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, have different ethnic and cultural identities and/or come from different countries, and may have a range of sexual orientations. In addition, they differ in terms of prior knowledge, interests, and the ways in which they study.

The challenge is to recognise and embrace diversity in our education, and to respond to it with differentiated teaching and teaching that is sensitive to diversity.

Motivate

Motivating students – what does it mean, and how do you do it? You can also encourage students to become more self-regulated in their learning or take on a motivational role as a coach. Finally, creating a positive classroom climate is another way to foster student motivation during class.

Provide targeted feedback

Feedback can be a powerful learning tool for students. The key condition, of course, is that the feedback is of high quality and that your students actually engage with it. It is also important to reflect on your students’ feedback literacy. Involving students themselves as feedback providers is considered good practice.

Ensure high-quality assessment

High-quality assessment requires transparency, reliability, and validity. Not all assessments follow the same format. For example, there are open-book exams, written exams with oral clarification, and multiple-choice tests.