Whereas different aspects of teaching and learning in Higher Education are often discussed within an academic community, teaching the EU seems to receive less attention. Especially in recent years we testimony the decreasing interest to EU studies in universities, including some signs of disappearing from educational curricula. Even more sad is the state of teaching the EU in economic faculties and other disciplinary areas. Teaching the EU is not always considered as an important and necessary part of these curricula. At the same time, in the still remaining studies of the EU, mainly situated in studies of politics or international relations, there is a tendency, with a few exemptions, to stick to a rather traditional approach of teaching the EU that does not change for years, no matter what the developments in the world are. In this paper I plea for the change of the existent paradigm in teaching the EU. The new global realities, such as a developing climate crisis and EU green economic transition, war in Europe and changing global security landscape, (still) continuing migration crisis and growing poverty worldwide, radicalization of political systems and intensifying populism, require to change the way the EU subject has been taught in universities. The scholars teaching the EU subject have to rethink the existent answers to the main educational questions, such as what, why, how and who is being taught about the EU. I propose a different approach to teaching the EU that not only redesigns the existent teaching practices of the EU, but also makes the introduction of EU studies in other than political science or international relations curricula, such as economic, business, environmental or many other interdisciplinary studies, possible and indispensable.
International education is a relatively new field and until recently, there was no formal education to prepare practitioners. This means that people working in international education are a colourful and diverse group, coming from a wide range of disciplines, which definitely adds to the attraction of the field. I call international education a field rather than a discipline since it is composed of a variety of established disciplines, such as languages, educational sciences, psychology, business, anthropology, history and even, in my case, classical archaeology. For this lecture, I have chosen to return to my original discipline and discuss global learning as the stages of an archaeological excavation. Cutting though the subsequent layers represents a history of international education but also my own professional history. By digging deeper down, layer after layer, I hope to uncover the essence of global learning in order to make its benefits available for all our students. This lecture consists of four sections. In the first section, I want to go back to the time when archaeology was a new discipline and see what we can learn from the research conducted at that time. In the second section I will reveal the layers of internationalisation and global learning until we come to the layer that we are currently exploring. In the third section, I will look at some of the factors and trends that will have an impact on global learning in the years to come. This shows that circumstances are quite different from when the excavation started and that global education is therefore dynamic. Finally, I will discuss what research the Research Group Global Learning will conduct, how and with whom, in the coming years.
In 2021, Breda University of Applied Sciences – 7,000 students in the domains of Hotel Management, Facility Management, Games, Media, Logistics, Built Environment, Leisure & Events, and Tourism –discussed the impact of the emerging developments of immersive technologies (VR, AR, AI, Digital Twins) within the sectoral industries.This project, DigiReal – Digital Realities (DR) for Smart Industries - aimed to look beyond the diversity and variety of individual use cases to develop valuable concepts and innovations in methodologies and lab infrastructure, discussing questions: how do we create, use and experience DR sensibly, meaningfully, and responsibly?This report contains a coherent summary of the project with a lot of (domain) examples and technological developments. As a result, this report contains a BUas-wide research agenda on Digital Realities with a framework of overall, generic research questions, methodologies and ecosystems. This research has been financed by Regieorgaan SIA, part of the Dutch National Funding Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
Our world is changing rapidly as a result of societal and technological developments that create new opportunities and challenges. Extended Realities (XR) could provide solutions for the problems the world is facing. In this project we apply these novel solutions in food and hospitality. It aims to tackle fundamental questions on how to stimulate a healthy and vital society that is based on a sustainable and innovative economy. This project aims to answer the question: How can Extended Reality (XR) technologies be integrated in the design of immersive food experiences to stimulate sustainable consumption behavior? A multidisciplinary approach, that has demonstrated its strength in the creative industry, will be applied in the hospitality and food sector. The project investigates implications and design considerations for immersion through XR technology that can stimulate sustainable consumption behavior. Based on XR prototypes, physiological data will be collected using biometric measuring devices in combination with self-reports. The effect of stimuli on sustainable consumption behavior during the immersive experience will be tested to introduce XR implementations that can motivate long-term behavioral change in food consumption. The results of the project contribute towards developing innovations in the hospitality sector that can tackle global societal challenges by exploiting the impact of new technology and understanding of consumer behavior to promote a healthy lifestyle and economy. Next to academic publications and conference contributions, the project will develop a handbook for hospitality professionals. It will outline steps and design criteria for the implementation of XR technologies to create immersive experiences that can stimulate sustainable consumption behavior. The knowledge generated in the project will contribute to the development of the curriculum at the Academy for Hotel and Facility at Breda University of Applied Sciences by introducing a technology-driven experience design approach for the course Sustainable Strategic Business Design.
