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Consulting and collaboration on teaching and education for educators at AU

Research-based degree programmes of the highest international quality. Engaging teaching and learning. The ambitions for education and teaching at Aarhus University are great and there are many reasons to be happy about that. But where can you find consulting and feedback on your efforts to develop teaching and education? The CED help you along the way.

At the CED, our mission is to provide advice and consult teaching staff and degree programme directors on large and small educational issues, ambitions, and ideas.

The CED offers research-based consulting on university pedagogy to all academic environments at AU. We prioritise a high degree of close collaboration with local academic environments at AU and work ambitiously with university pedagogy on a research-based foundation.

With regular course offerings, we support the ongoing competency development of educators from student instructors to professors across AU. But in addition, much of what we do is not visible in a course calendar.

Consulting with teaching staff and degree programme directors is a large part of our mission and we offer to advice on educational initiatives or experiments at department and programme level, course level, and lesson level.

Often, an educator or degree programme director have specific wishes or needs that the CED can help with. To make tangible what we offer, we have listed some various topical themes below. However, do not hesitate to grab the phone or take up the pen and contact us.

A broad portfolio of tasks within university education

Course and module design

The CED offers consulting concerning the organisation of your course or module to ensure it is consistent with the learning objectives, aligned, and supports students’ learning and progression.

We can also advise on how to design a course with learning activities both on-campus and online with individual and study group-based preparation, which is either the educator or student controlled.

Student activating forms of teaching

A wide range of teaching activities supports students when learning how to apply their newly acquired academic skills to process and solve research-related and professional problems.

The CED can advise on how to design project and product-oriented activities ranging from working with single cases to the processing and solving of complex, authentic problems.

Collaboration on the academic content is an essential element of the students’ learning process. We can support the development of a wide range of collaboration forms and study group dynamics.

In addition, the students often ask for more and better feedback. We offer advice on the development of student-involved teaching activities such as peer feedback and automated digital feedback. Similarly, we can assist in the work of teaching the students to assess their need for and seek out relevant feedback.

Programme development

The students’ feedback is an essential contribution to the systematic development of programmes. The CED can support your work with the development of excellent and informative evaluation practices and help translate the results into specific development initiatives.

Through research-based programmes, the students develop generic competencies, such as collaboration, communication, and management of complex development-oriented situations. These competencies are important for their learning outcomes and well-being during their studies. Furthermore, these competencies are also in demand by prospective employers.

The CED can advise on how to organise the study programmes so that they support the systematic development of these types of competencies.

Strategic initiatives

The transition from upper secondary education to university is both stimulating and challenging for many students. Demands are high in the form of a much larger syllabus, new and more unassisted working methods, and new research-based standards for the production of knowledge. In addition, the students will be developing new academic identities.

The CED is happy to work with you to develop the first academic year so that the students gradually get settled at the university. This will increase their learning outcome and well-being while at the same time reducing the dropout rate.

During the past years, AU has taken strategic attention to the area of digitisation. Since 2018, this effort has been put into practice with a strategic focus on educational IT. In the coming years, the digitisation efforts will be expanded. The aim is digital competencies for all students.

The CED can assist with the digitisation efforts through inspiration for the use of digital learning technologies in teaching (educational IT) and consulting on how digital competencies can be used in the programmes, both in connection with the academic regulations and in the design of teaching activities.

Contact us

The CED is involved in both extensive and short development projects with teaching as the focal point. If you are interested in aid and collaboration, you are always welcome to contact us for an informal chat.