Newsletter December 2020: Sustainable Development Goals at the TAL-Conference 2020
For the 8th time, SDU Centre for Teaching and Learning hosted our annual Teaching for Active Learning conference on November 3, 2020. As always, the starting point of the conference was the Underlying Principles for Education of SDU, and this year’s main theme was “The Sustainable Development Goals in Teaching”. In this month’s newsletter, you can read about how you can use the content and theme of the conference as inspiration in your own teaching practice.
The TAL20 conference was held online on November 3. The participants were students, teachers, education developers and others with an interest in pedagogical developments within teaching at universities and higher education. The conference provided the participants with the opportunity of sharing their experiences and examples on active learning and sustainability goals in their teaching – as well as gathering inspiration from other conference participants.
The Focus of the Conference
The theme of the conference, sustainable development goals in teaching, is related to SDU’s goal of working with the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals. What does this focus mean in a classroom setting? How can we plan, conduct and review teaching – not just about the SDGs, but also using the SDGs? At the conferences, examples of teaching practices were presented, which showed both how the SDGs can be integrated into teaching and how this affected the students’ commitment and learning.
This year, the conference did not count just one keynote – instead it counted an entire keynote panel: Janne Liburd from The Department of Design and Communication, Lykke Ricard and Sofie Hybel from The Department of Technology and Innovation, Maria Elo and Brandon Beach from The Department of Marketing & Management, and Sara Egemose from the Department of Biology, who all provided us with four interesting examples of how they have incorporated and worked with the sustainable development goals in their teaching practices. The keynote panel presentation and the following discussion with the conference participants were recorded and can be viewed using this link.
Examples of teaching practices
In the right panel, you will find two examples from TAL2020 describing the use of SDGs in teaching at SDU. The third example, also from TAL2020, is about a way to activate students in courses that were restricted to online teaching during the COVID19 lockdown. If you are interested in the many other fine examples of activating teaching using the SDGs that were presented at the conference, you can read about them in the book of abstracts from the conference.
Interested in further exchange of experience with using the SDGs in teaching?
We are currently working on creating a network for everyone with an interest in teaching with and about the SDGs. If you are interested, please feel free to contact Rie Troelsen.
The Great Example - Sustainable Materials in Product Creation
Lykke Margot Ricard and Sofie Bach Hybel present their experiences with the course Sustainable Materials in Product Creation and how they have worked with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in the course.
The Great Example - The Student's Journey
At the TAL2020 conference Tine Lynfort Jensen and Jesper Piihl presented The Student’s Journey, which they describe describe it as a dialogue and a constant reflection on how to create a holistic education, which gives the students an array of personal and professional qualifications.
The Great Example - Lab@Home
At the TAL2020 conference, Alexander H. Treusch presented a way of conducting practice-based lab teaching during the difficult circumstances caused by COVID-19.