The CREATES team has produced three publications about co-creative learning and advising in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA): an academic paper summarising scientific evidence regarding the value of this approach, a position paper explaining the approach and its merits, and a policy paper discussing policies to encourage institutions to adopt it.
 

CREATES Position Paper

Towards Responsive, Engaging, Active, and Tailored Education: An Agenda for Educational Reform in the EHEA

CREATES Position Paper

Authors: Teun J. Dekker and Gerard Korsten with Volker Balli, Helen Brookman, Ursula Glunk, Delphine Grouès, Francesco Strazzari, Sara J. Tomczuk & Ege Tufan

Summary: Europe has great ambitions for modernisation in higher education. The European Union, national governments and institutions alike have proclaimed that it is of paramount importance to rethink university education. The CREATES partners believe that all graduates of higher education need to be creative and innovative, collaborate with others, and make informed decisions about their own development and that of their societies. Realising this vision will require significant reform of teaching and learning, facilitated by a drastic change in the culture of higher education institutions. Only then can Europe’s ambitions for higher education be realised.

This position paper makes the case for the CREATES approach to higher education; it seeks to make an argument for why institutions should make use of the resources CREATES has produced. It explores key social, economic and civic challenges, considers the role of universities in preparing students for their futures, and outlines why a teacher-centred approach does not work as well as more active and engaging conceptions of higher education. The paper then presents an overview of recent higher education policies, demonstrating that there is widespread consensus about the need to make education in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) more student-centred and co-creative. The paper then explores some key facts and major trends relating to teaching and learning in the EHEA, concluding that ambitions are far from met. At last, the authors present the CREATES approach and, by introducing the four CREATES toolkits, explain how it can be applied to enable higher education in Europe to better equip students for their futures.

 

CREATES Policy Paper

Policies for Realising, Responsive, Engaging, Active, and Tailored Education with Students: Some suggestions for stimulating educational reform in the EHEA

CREATES Policy paper

Authors: Teun J. Dekker, Gerard Korsten & Ursula Glunk with Helen Brookman, Sevgi Doğan, Delphine Grouès, Francesco Strazzari & Sara J. Tomczuk

Summary: There is widespread agreement amongst educators, educational researchers, policy makers and institutional leaders that higher education in the EHEA should become more co-creative and student-centred. However, actual innovation has been slow. Policy makers and administrators thus require tools to encourage and incentivise institutions to modernise their teaching practices. This paper presents a number of policy instruments that policy makers might consider implementing in order to encourage higher education institutions to adopt co-creative learning practices. They are:

  • Teaching grants
  • Teaching careers
  • National teaching and learning forums
  • Student engagement surveys
  • Student-centred quality assurance

CREATES Academic Paper

The Pedagogical Value of Co-Creative Education: A Systematic Review of the Evidence for the CREATES Approach

CREATES Academic Paper

The CREATES project presents a rare opportunity for practice-based research in higher education, offering a chance to combine the expertise and insights of the partner institutions and our learning from our activities and development work. The academic paper presents these insights in a systematic and rigorous fashion, addressing the following questions:

  • how do we facilitate engaged and co-creative learning?
  • what challenges have we faced and how did we overcome them? and
  • what did we learn about learning in the process?