The Future of Higher Education

01/04/2025

Dear colleagues,

We return with the fourth and final special guest that will cover one of the talks of the conference!

Special guest of the day
Professor Romiță Iucu, PhD
University of Bucharest, Romania

Brief Bio: Professor Romiță IUCU is the President of the Board of Trustees at the University of Bucharest and a professor of higher education and Pedagogy at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences. With an important experience in international cooperation in the field of education, professor Iucu is, currently, the Coordinator of UNICA EduLAB Group, the Co-Chair of the FOREU European Degree subgroup of European Universities, and a former member of the European University Association (EUA) Learning & Teaching (L&T) Steering Committee. He has been appointed as a Magna Charta Observatory Ambassador from April 2022 and broaden rewarded as a member of The International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame (IACEHOF). Starting from 2024 he is also a member of the Future of the Bologna Process Task Force. Professor Iucu held several university-management positions (former Acting Rector of the University of Bucharest, and Vice-Rector for Academical Affairs for more than 16 years), with an important role on designing, managing, and validating higher education and adult education policies at different level. He is a former President of ENTEP (European Network on Teacher Education Policies) and was the national’s representative in the BFUG (Bologna Follow-up Group). Professor Iucu had worked for many years at the European Network of Country Experts in Education (ENCEE), and as a member of the Expert Group on Improving the Education of Teachers & Trainers. He also worked for the European Commission, Eurydice, World Bank, and UNICEF in several educational programmes. As a recognition of his professional activity, he was inducted as a member of The International Adult and Continuing Education (IACE) Hall of Fame (UO-OCCE). His main fields of scientific interest are educational policies in the higher education area, higher education pedagogy and teacher education policies.

Title of presentation: New arrangements of learning in the European University Alliances, new flexible learning pathways
European university alliances are the most important transformational approach to higher education in Europe since the Bologna Process, and the challenges associated with this initiative are very diverse and complex. One of the most important of these, which will also be addressed in this presentation, is related to the new learning arrangements, the new ways of shifting trans-institutional perspectives, from structures that serve learning, to processes that both require and involve learning in a flexible, deep, and relevant perspective. Pedagogical innovations, as well as innovative pedagogies, both centred on new flexible learning approaches, can offer generous resources for reflection, at institutional or trans-institutional level (alliances level), and all of them will be, intensively, explored through this presentation.

We will soon come back with more info! Stay tuned!

Best regards,
The FOHE Organising committee.

Conference website

Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai - Facultatea de Psihologie și Științe ale Educației - Departamentul de Științe ale Educației

31/03/2025

Dear colleagues,

We return with the third special guest that will cover one of the talks of the conference! Before introducing her, we take advantage to remind you that there is only ONE day left of the registration period for the participation with personal papers, so we warmly encourage you to submit as soon as possible.

Special guest of the day
Professor Jo Angouri, PhD
University of Warwick, UK

Brief Bio: Jo Angouri is Professor in Sociolinguistics and Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education and Internationalisation at the University of Warwick, UK; Visiting Distinguished Professor at Aalto University, School of Business, Finland; Affiliate (Visiting Professor) at Monash University, Australia; Research Associate at the University of Wellington, New Zealand and Visiting Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. She has published extensively on Leadership, Risk, Decision Making and Problem Solving as well as Research Methodology. She is Subject Chair for Linguistics, Language, Communication and Media on the Scopus board.
Jo is a National Teaching Fellow (UK) and committed to pedagogic innovation and education for global citizenship. She has significant experience in research-led education, multidisciplinary curriculum design and undergraduate and postgraduate programme leadership. At the University of Warwick, she leads on the development and growth of existing and new international education projects with the University’s strategic partners. She is on The EUTOPIA University Alliance Education Team and is co-leading on the Learning Communities and Curriculum Development for the network. Her vision for student empowerment focuses on creating the conditions and support for students to take ownership of their learning and to develop a clear voice and a global outlook through their higher education journey.

Title of presentation: Reimagine the future of higher education: Balancing competing trends
Higher education is undergoing a profound transformation, shaped by global challenges, geopolitical shifts, the impact of artificial intelligence, and shrinking resources in the sector. At the same time, universities are expected to provide flexible and individualised pathways for diverse learner cohorts seeking to re-skill and up-skill; foster innovation while maintaining standardisation; respond to rapid change while ensuring intellectual depth-conditions for producing solutions to wicked problems of the present and future; and deliver transformational learning and research with fewer resources in an increasingly competitive global landscape.
This presentation examines how HE can navigate these tensions by advancing a new model, one that harnesses transnational collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and technological advancements while constructively building on existing policy structures, insights from the Covid-19 pandemic on the social experience of learning, and the co-constitutive relationship between research-led teaching and the evolving skills agenda. Strategic initiatives such as European University Alliances offer a framework for balancing these competing trends, fostering institutional resilience, and amplifying HE’s societal impact in an era of rapid and profound change.

Don't forget: Registrations with the possibility of presenting papers are open until April 1st. We look forward to each and every one submission!

Best regards,
The FOHE Organising committee.

Conference website

Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai - Facultatea de Psihologie și Științe ale Educației - Departamentul de Științe ale Educației

30/03/2025

Dear colleagues,

We return with the second special guest that will cover one of the talks of the conference! Before introducing him, we take advantage to remind you that there are only TWO days left of the registration period for the participation with personal papers, so we warmly encourage you to submit as soon as possible.

Special guest of the day
Pedro de Bruyckere, PhD
Utrecht University, Nederlands

Brief Bio: Researcher and Educational Scientist at the University of Utrecht (Netherlands) and head of Leerpunt, the Flemish knowledge broker for education. He is the author of The Ingredients for Great Teaching (2018) Co-Author of The Psychology of Great Teaching: (Almost) Everything Teachers Ought to Know (2022) "Translating Research into Classroom Practice: Cognitive Science and Beyond" (2022, The Chartered College of Teaching) More Urban Myths About Learning and Education (2019) and Urban Myths About Learning and Education (2015). Pedro also blogs on a regular basis about education and research on TheEconomyOfMeaning.com

Title of presentation: The Psychology of Great Teaching
In his talk Pedro De Bruyckere will explore robust current ideas and contemporary findings from different psychological disciplines such as cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, personality theory and systems theory after the replication crisis. You will gain new insights to enhance your teaching. The ultimate purpose is to deepen your knowledge of how students and young people develop and learn as individuals and how a greater understanding of human behaviour can make you a more effective teacher.

Don't forget: Registrations with the possibility of presenting papers are open until April 1st. We look forward to each and every one submission!

Best regards,
The FOHE Organising committee.

Conference website
https://dse.psiedu.ubbcluj.ro/conferinte/fohe/

Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai - Facultatea de Psihologie și Științe ale Educației - Departamentul de Științe ale Educației

29/03/2025

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for your responsiveness to the event and its media coverage.
As promised, we return with some updates. We also take advantage of the time frame to start presenting the special guests that will cover the talks of the conference.

Update

There are only 3 days left until the end of the registration period for the submission of personal papers (oral presentations or posters).
Therefore, we encourage you and your colleagues to take into account the submission of papers as soon as possible (psycho-educational research: qualitative or quantitative, examples of good teaching practices, proposals for innovative teaching strategies, etc.).

Special guest of the day
Professor Stephen L. Chew
Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, USA

Brief Bio: Stephen L. Chew is a professor of psychology at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, one of his primary research interests is the cognitive basis of effective teaching and learning. Chew works to translate cognitive research for teachers and students. He developed a research-based framework of cognitive challenges that teachers must address to promote student learning. In 2011, he created a series of groundbreaking YouTube videos on how to study effectively that have received millions of views and are in wide use at educational institutions around the world. Chew is the recipient of multiple national awards for his teaching and research, including being named the 2011 U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and receiving the award for Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training from the American Psychological Association in 2022. Chew is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and serves as the chair of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP).

Title of the presentation: The Cognitive Challenges of Effective Teaching
No matter what teaching method you prefer, the more you know about how people learn, the better able you will be to teach effectively. Learning is a complex interaction of multiple factors. In this presentation, I will describe a research-based conceptual framework of cognitive challenges that teachers and students must negotiate for students to learn. It consists of nine interacting cognitive challenges that include student mental mindset, metacognition and self-regulation, student fear and mistrust, prior knowledge, misconceptions, ineffective learning strategies, transfer of learning, constraints of selective attention, and the constraints of mental effort and working memory. After describing the challenges, I will recommend possible ways of addressing each one. The framework is context-dependent; what is effective for one situation may not be effective in others, and no single teaching method will always be optimal for all teachers, students, topics, and educational contexts. The framework can guide the design, implementation, and troubleshooting of teaching practices.

Don't forget: Registrations with the possibility of presenting papers are open until April 1st. We look forward to each and every one submission!

Best regards,
The FOHE Organising committee.

Conference website

Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai - Facultatea de Psihologie și Științe ale Educației - Departamentul de Științe ale Educației

18/03/2025

Welcome to the official website of the conference The Future of Higher Education – Evidence-Based Approaches and Practices 2025, which will take place on 16-17 May in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. The event will be hosted by the Babeș-Bolyai University.

Through this website, we aim to be close to potential participants who want to take part in the conference. We will keep you updated with regard to various relevant information as the start date approaches.

We invite you to take a look at the conference poster and visit our website via the link: https://dse.psiedu.ubbcluj.ro/conferinte/fohe/. Stay tuned for more!

Best wishes,
The organizing committee.