TAL2026: Learning Communities
Thursday 5 November 2026 from 9.00 AM - 3.30 PM SDU Centre for Teaching and Learning invites you to this year’s TAL Conference at SDU Odense. At TAL2026, we turn our attention to learning communities as a key to fostering engagement, collaboration, and meaningful learning experiences across programmes and courses.
Each year the main theme of the conference is active teaching and learning, which are a fundamental part of education at SDU. The conference intends to support practitioners’ mutual inspiration and present knowledge and experiences on how students’ learning is enhanced through student-centered leaning, active teaching and communities with mutual responsiblities in accordance with the guiding principles at SDU.
TAL2026 Special Focus: Learning Communities
How can we teach so that students do not just attend, but actively participate, contribute, and experience a sense of belonging? At TAL2026, we turn our attention to learning communities as a key to fostering engagement, collaboration, and meaningful learning experiences across programmes and courses.
TAL2026 brings together teachers, leaders, and educational developers to explore how these questions can be addressed in practice across disciplines and educational contexts.
This year’s theme is closely connected to SDU’s educational principles, which place learning communities at the centre of teaching and learning.
Guiding Principles for Education
The starting point for TAL2026’s special focus are the updated guiding principles for education at SDU educational principles which explicitly refer to learning communities.
In these principles, learning communities are described as follows:
‘Student-centred learning and activating teaching require that teaching takes place in learning communities where mutual responsibilities are shared between students and between students and teachers.
Learning happens first and foremost together with others - even though the student is responsible for their own learning. The linking work, i.e. the active work with the material, the understanding and the deep learning, takes place largely in discussion with, resistance from, feedback to and from, and collaboration with others. Well-being, sense of belonging, motivation, confidence in their own abilities and perseverance are also strengthened in the company of others.
SDU therefore systematically supports a social study practice that is based on and requires collaboration between students, fellow students and teachers both in and between classes. Students are involved by teachers in various ways in the planning and evaluation of teaching content, learning activities, goal expectations and forms of feedback.’
Read bout SDU’s Guiding principles for education.
Last Updated 20.03.2026