by Anneleen Cosemans, KU Leuven, Belgium.
This article is part of the “Centres for Teaching and Learning” series, a collection of interviews and articles exploring the diverse roles and innovative practices of CTLs, presented by the Media and Learning CTL Special Interest Group. In this series, we invite one of our members each month to introduce their CTL, describe the work they do and to highlight some of the challenges they face.
This month’s interview is with Anneleen Cosemans, co-director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at KU Leuven in Belgium.
Let’s start at the beginning. What is KU Leuven’s CTL called, and how is it organised?
Our CTL is called Teaching & Learning Services. It’s a central CTL that forms part of KU Leuven Learning Lab, which is a network connecting it to educational expertise within faculties and services. We are organised into several teams within three clusters, covering a wide range of activities. The first cluster focuses on administrative processes, the second on educational development and the third contains centrally supporting teams. The administrative processes cluster contains the teams Admissions, Enrollment, Program Administration, Administrative Processes and Student Accounting and Mobility. The educational development cluster contains the teams Course Creation and Multimedia Services, Academic Development & Educational Support Strategy, Quality Assurance and Study Program Offer. And the centrally supporting teams in the third cluster are Educational Innovation, Strategic Policy, Communication, Data Analysis and Internal Operations.
How does KU Leuven value teaching and learning?
With a wide range of initiatives. We offer different instruments to our teaching staff to share how they can incorporate our university’s vision on education into their teaching practice, and to get feedback to improve their teaching. That goes from formal processes to freely available tools and services, to more informally organised initiatives.
Our Education Council also awards exceptional achievements every year, and appreciation for education informs the career advancement decision process of our teaching staff. In addition, our CTL organises training for starting professors and teaching staff and coordinates a university-wide network of educational support staff in the faculties, responsible for setting up local training and educational support for teaching staff and didactical teams.
What are the main educational themes KU Leuven Teaching & Learning Services focuses on, and who is your target group?
We focus on a broad range of educational themes. They include a forward-looking programme offer, a strategic and proactive education policy, an education quality culture shaped by evidence-informed and innovative teaching methods, an efficient educational organisation, and finally high-performance quality assurance and educational policy processes. We directly target our educational developers, administrative directors, education and student administrations, programme directors and heads of education. The ultimate goal is of course to have an impact on teaching staff, assistants, tutors and students.
What products and services does KU Leuven Teaching & Learning Services offer?
With regard to course design and multimedia, our products and services include a mandatory (blended) training for new teaching staff, freely available online support materials, optional (blended) training opportunities to optimise teaching and student learning (including MOOC bootcamps, AI training sessions, diversity training sessions, …), a professional multimedia service, different multimedia recording studios and a lending service for professional-grade multimedia equipment. As a whole, our CTL offers much more. That goes from teaching portfolio support, the student evaluation of teaching, a tool for teaching commitment mapping to innovation calls and project support, and much, much more…
How does KU Leuven Teaching & Learning Services obtain information about the need for products and services?
Our CTL’s product and service offering is a result of both policy choices and coordination with our faculties and other central service units within KU Leuven Learning Lab.
What obstacles are KU Leuven Teaching & Learning Services currently facing, and how is it tackling them?
Our available budget is not endless and is under pressure, as is the case for universities worldwide. This combined with the complex challenges in university education and challenging projects demands constant reprioritisation and creative ways to distribute our expert staff working on these projects.
Which KU Leuven Teaching & Learning Services success story are you most proud of?
We are most proud of our connectivity (KU Leuven Learning Lab), our multidisciplinarity, flexibility and our agility.
What would your ideal CTL look like?
KU Leuven Teaching & Learning Services is well organised, but we are currently still physically spread out across different locations (Leuven, Heverlee and other campuses throughout Flanders in Belgium). A common physical space, a warm and welcoming center, would be nice, and we are working on that.
Anneleen Cosemans, Co-director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) at KU Leuven, Belgium.
