Strategic cooperation plan at project partner institutions: Improving quality of teaching and learning in Higher Education

The workshop is to support the cooperation between the international team of collaborators from Comenius University in Bratislava, Masaryk University, Central European University, Delft University of Technology, and the European Consortium for Political Research. By collaborating with the partners who are well-positioned and experienced in their institutional practice, working in their institutions for many years, we will use our cooperation to create a space to address the needs of systematic support of higher quality teaching throughout the universities in Central Europe. The primarily contribution of the individual experts attending the workshop is a paper mapping of the strengths of participating institutions, best practices in teaching and learning which they have identified together with areas for future cooperation. Because of our ongoing cooperation in other areas, we have already accomplished progress in several areas. These include the courses “Effective teaching for Internationalisation” and “Academic writing for publication” for university teachers and online portal on internationalisation of teaching in higher education serving as an open-access platform for sharing good teaching and learning practices. Furthermore, the expertise, practise, and institutional aims of the partner institutions allow for noting a preliminary list of areas for the strategic cooperation even before the complete mapping of partner institution is created: 1. Being able to adapt to a globally changing educational system and post-pandemic practices in online education, Delft University of Technology aims to strengthen their position of a leader in digital education consisting of virtual reality and artificial intelligence in educational process and sharing a platform to connect other project partners on leading hybrid sessions (face to face and online). 2. Furthermore, there is a strong tradition of highly appreciated ECPR Teaching and Learning Summer schools at the Comenius University in Bratislava and Summer schools at Central European University which might lead to a cooperation in this particular area. Both institutions are willing to strengthen their cooperation through sharing intellectual and research resources, contributing to the joint research, organising conferences and summer schools for the teachers from all institutions. 3. Partners from both Masaryk University and Comenius University aim to strengthen the cooperation between them and other partner institutions bearing in mind their practices focused on join units for teaching and learning in Higher Education. We assume the workshop serves as an opportunity to learn from each other and there is a possibility to adapt good practices that partner institutions in western Europe has introduced through their programmes focused on diverse students (first generation students, students from disadvantaged social background, etc.) contributing to the strong aspect of promoting the well-being as a concept at the university. 4. The European Consortium for Political Research is a leader in academic networking and communication of research results. Usage of virtual platforms, and events as conferences or method schools offers vital asset to the researchers and teachers among the partner institutions.