The University of Tartu will host the fourth ENLIGHT Teaching and Learning Conference from October 7th to 9th 2024.

The event will address the following central theme:

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION​

Creativity is the ability to produce new, diverse, and unique ideas. It is the practice of thinking outside of the box. Creativity empowers students to find innovative solutions to complex challenges. While creativity is the ability to produce new and unique ideas, innovation is the implementation of that creativity.

Education strives to prepare students for a world of constant change. Beyond traditional academic knowledge, students must develop essential skills that will equip them to thrive in this dynamic landscape. Students propose innovative solutions to a situation or problem, are able to undertake novel actions and show initiative and resolution capacity (ENLIGHT Competence Framework). It means students can look at a problem from multiple perspectives — including those others may not see.

Teaching should cater to developing students’ creative and innovative skills by incorporating active learning, challenge-based education, project-based learning, problem-solving, arts-based tasks and critical thinking activities. Collaboration and communication are crucial, as are considerations for equity to ensure access for all students.

The conference offers an excellent opportunity to share ideas and experiences on how innovation and creativity have been supported in universities and how to do so in the future.

INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY IN HIGHER EDUCATION​

Sub-themes

• Supporting creativity and innovation in education through active learning and engagement: incorporating CBE and other active learning formats.
• Designing learning environments that foster creativity and innovation: facilitating novel approaches and modelling creative solutions to challenges and problems in education. ​
• GenAI’s impact on creativity: harnessing AI’s potential and navigating its implications for equity and assessment.
• Society's expectations for a creative university: collaboration among stakeholders as a way of generating innovative ideas to address pressing societal challenges​.

• Failure or a Creative Idea? Creating mechanisms to encourage risk-taking and learning from mistakes during the creative process.
• Challenges in assessing innovation and creativity: navigating the meaning of assessment in the learning process, task design, and assessment criteria.

The conference will take place from 7–9 October 2024. The conference begins with a pre-conference on October 7, when longer workshops will be held on topics related to the conference theme. The following days of the conference will be dedicated to oral presentations, shorter workshops, poster presentations and roundtable discussions.

The T&L 2024 ENLIGHT target groups are:

• Academics: Teachers, educational leaders, learning design specialists and researchers, with particular emphasis on those designing educational courses and programmes.

• Students & alumni: The ENLIGHT conference strives to involve students as presenters, attendees, or both, to balance viewpoints between teaching and learning counterparts and stimulate a constructive dialogue.

• Educational developers: Those responsible for disseminating teaching practices in their own universities will benefit from, and add significant value to, this event and good pedagogical practices.

• Administrative & support staff: For instance, staff from International Offices, IT departments, library personnel, student services, campus development services, career services.