Digital technologies are widely used in Higher Education (HE), but recent evidence suggests they are not always effective for teaching, learning, and indeed creative inquiry in higher education. Higher education institutions (HEIs) should therefore ‘prioritize and recognize’ ongoing learning about the use of technology by their staff to make a positive impact (NMC Horizon Report: Higher Education Edition, 2017, p.2). HE teaching skills are best addressed not within single university or an individual country, but rather through transnational cooperation between HEIs to develop best practice and innovation. International collaboration is particularly crucial in the case of open educational practices, which we believe are the key for university pedagogy to keep page with an increasing pervasive and sophisticated digital era. This is the foundation for our current Erasmus+ project ‘SHaring Open educational practices Using Technology For Higher Education’ (SHOUT4HE).
The SHOUT4HE project has three main objectives.
There are five university partners (Bordeaux, Cardiff, Hasselt, Limerick, Nice), in four countries (Belgium, France, Ireland, the UK), all of whom are involved in HE teacher education. Each partner is working with several local HE teachers covering a wide variety of disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical experience with the goal of recognising, developing and sharing innovative practice with technologies. The resultant framework, e-platform, open educational practices, and e-Books will be freely available and widely disseminated with the aim of achieving longer term impact on individual HE teachers but also more generally on university teaching and professional development programmes.
