Community engagement in higher education

SPACE & ECEM webinar: Co-Creating Curriculum in Service-Learning

The SPACE and ECEM projects came together on April 30, 2025 in a webinar for the community engaged teaching and learning practitioners. This workshop explored the intersection of service-learning and curriculum co-creation, emphasising collaborative learning between educators, students, and community partners. Participants engaged in short reflective exercises and interactive discussions to examine how co-creation promotes student agency, civic engagement, and reciprocal learning. Through concrete examples and experiences, strategies for designing service-learning experiences that are authentic, co-creative, and transformative were identified, and attendees gained practical insights and tools to integrate co-creative service-learning practices into their own curricula.

Register for the SPACE short training session

This session will introduce different partnership models, with a focus on how to tailor approaches to meet the needs of both academic institutions and communities. Ethical considerations and potential dilemmas will be critically discussed. The session will also highlight the resources required to sustain partnerships and provide strategies for overcoming common challenges.

SPACE project consortium meeting in Cork: Strengthening University–Community Partnerships

The SPACE project, funded through the Erasmus+ programme, is a continuation of TECFE and SHEFCE projects, is another community engagement initiative involving four European universities from Ireland, Belgium, Spain, and Croatia. As part of this project, academic staff will integrate community engaged teaching and learning into their curricula, an approach that combines academic instruction with meaningful community engagement.

Community engaged learning training held in Zagreb

On January 22-23, the Institute for the Development of Education hosted an inspiring training in Zagreb, organised within the ECEM (Engaging Communities Through Engaged Mobilities), an Erasmus+ project, as the third in a series of trainings and was focused on Community Engaged Learning, with a spotlight on service learning in the context of student mobilities.
Thee training started by painting the big picture, by exploring the social dimension of higher education and the concept of community engagement. Thomas Farnell from the SPACE project consortium shared the TEFCE Toolbox approach, with a special overview of the Teaching and Learning dimension, which is the focus of the SPACE project, so links and possible synergies of the two projects were discussed.

EngageAll: new EU project on student competences gained through civic engagement

Aligning universities to address the social challenges of a time of polycrises, empowering students to tackle these challenges and actively shape the society of the future – this is one of the biggest tasks for universities today. The Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW) Karlsruhe is launching a European initiative that will make the importance of student engagement visible over the next three years, support students in the development of essential Future Skills and integrate these Future Skills into higher education in the long term. The Institute foer the Development of Education (IDE), which leads a European platform for community engagement www.community-engagement.eu, will be a partner on the project.

SPACE short trainings on integrating community engagement into curricula

The EU-funded project Supporting Professionals and Academics for Community Engagement in Higher Education (SPACE) is organising a short trainings series to explore essential topics related to the design, implementation, and integration of community-engaged practices into academic curricula.

YUFE Conference on University–Community Relations: Strengthening Local Impact

The YUFE Conference on University–Community Relations was held on 14-15 November 2024 and served as a dynamic platform bringing together university leaders, academics, researchers, students, and community actors. The event showcased YUFE’s achievements and opened up discussion on a variety of strategies for building socially responsible and mutually beneficial relationships between universities and their surrounding communities.

Community engagement discussed at the Academic Freedom in Action conference in Strasbourg

Nino S. Schmidt and Thomas Farnell (Institute for the Development of Education) presented on the essential connections between academic freedom and the civic mission and community engagement of universities at the Council of Europe’s Academic Freedom in Action conference in Strasbourg, 13-14 November. The discussions highlighted how a strong civic mission can actively reinforce public support for academic freedom—an insight resonating strongly with our audience.

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