Learning & Teaching

EUA’s yearly European Learning & Teaching Forum provides an opportunity for participants to meet and discuss developments in learning and teaching at European universities. Topics addressed at the annual Forum range from good practice in teaching enhancement and institutional strategies to national and European policies. The Forum builds on EUA’s work with its member universities on this topic. Alongside this bottom-up approach, the Forum makes use of EUA’s extensive policy work in European higher education.

Attend the 2024 European Learning & Teaching Forum

As demonstrated in EUA’s Trends 2018 report, learning and teaching enhancement has become an institutional priority, generating dedicated strategies and structures.

Through work with its membership, EUA explores institutional approaches to education provision and provides recommendations on institutional strategies. Such approaches can underpin university communities’ efforts in learning and teaching and support staff, students and leadership in their roles and responsibilities.
In the framework of the EFFECT project, EUA, together with partner universities and organisations, also issued a set of 10 “Ten European Principles for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching”. These support the need to re-emphasise the education mission of the university, and to service institutional leaders working with staff, students and external stakeholders.

The EUA-led LOTUS project (2020-2022) focused on capacity building and strategic change management for learning and teaching at higher education institutions across Europe. The project included a leadership development programme to address processes and conditions for the implementation of institutional learning and teaching strategies, while also exploring how learning and teaching can be best supported by national and European policies.

Learn about the results of the LOTUS project

The input, engagement and competence of academic staff is crucial to enhance learning and teaching. Teaching must be fully recognised as central to the academic profession and considered in assessment practices and career development.

To raise the status of teaching in higher education, EUA’s work explores incentives and policies for academic staff to invest in teaching, develop their teaching competences, better balance their teaching and research workload and progress in their careers in teaching.

EUA’s EFFECT project (2015-2019) also addressed teaching enhancement, notably with a feasibility study on teaching enhancement in European higher education. In addition, two EFFECT reports mapped national developments in learning and teaching in several European Higher Education Area (EHEA) countries, with a focus on teaching enhancement. 

Digitalisation is transforming the way students learn, as well as the ways institutions deliver education. As digitalisation remains high on European, national and institutional agendas, EUA continues to monitor developments and actively contribute to discussions in this area.

While blended forms of online learning currently appear as the most common route for including digital learning at European higher education institutions, the Trends 2018 report shows that digital learning is reinforcing its presence and that universities want to use it more strategically.

Recently, EUA coordinated the DIGI-HE project (2020-2023), which aimed to encourage self-reflection on digitally enhanced learning and teaching at European higher education institutions and strengthen strategic approaches to digitally enhanced learning and teaching and capacity building.