 Hello and welcome to our audience across Europe and beyond. This, my name is Jan Pamosi, I'm the Secretary-General of the Guild of European Research Intensive Universities. And it is my great pleasure indeed to welcome you to this concluding event of our seminar series on research-led education for the digital age. And this is a seminar series that kicked off exactly a year ago with an inside paper authored by Joe Anguri. Before I introduce this today's session, may I encourage you to really share anything that you wish to share, your reflections on what you hear and anything you'd like to raise in the chat. And if you have questions, please post them through the Zoom Q&A and we'll try and respond to them as we go through the program. Also please engage with the event on Twitter and the hashtag is hashtag future of education. So first of all, it's a great pleasure to welcome for the first panel those authors who were really a seminal to this series of events throughout. That's Joe Anguri, Joe Anguri who's the author of our inside paper. But she was also really supported by a writing team of consisting of Auna Falk from the University of Tatu, Berend Eike from Orhus University and Karen Almas from Tübingen. And in the lead up to the inside paper there was a really intensive series of meetings on a sort of bi-weekly basis between this group to really think through what it might mean to reflect on pedagogical change, educational change at a time when the, when you know during the pandemic 100% of our universities were online. What and what were the implications in particular for research led education. And this we launched this inside paper a year ago and then we had a number of seminars where we explored in greater depth some of the key contentions of the inside paper and of that work of of Joe and her colleagues. And so there were a number of key areas that the inside paper contended in. First of all, that the future of education in higher education was both digital and analog. And to explore that in greater depth we had a seminar series then more recently hosted by the University of Glasgow where the university and where we all together really reflected on how we could then translate some of these thoughts and ideas into practice in in concrete ways in terms of the the learning produced and and engineered at the university. We then had another space of thought which was really around the distinctive support and the emphasis here on the distinctive support that research led universities should give to lifelong learning. And that was really authored. And that was really then pursued in further greater depth by John Guru at a seminar hosted at Warren University. Another really important area of discussion and debate has been about around quality assurance systems. How can we develop the kind of quality assurance system that we enable rather than hinder educational transformation. And that was really taken further and discussed in much much greater depth by a seminar led by Barrett Eichert or whose university and her colleagues and in particular Susan Wright. And then finally there was a real focus on the internationalization and how the future of internationalization could play into role into pedagogical change. And that was really hosted by by the by Arnafark and the and Tatu University. So we and it's wonderful now to bring these discussions to a close and what these what these seminars series had in common was really a common engagement with this question of how universities need to stay true to their values they need to stay true to what they're really good at, while at the same time being really open to the educational to the societal and economical transformations around them. And this kind of tension is is something that will really explore in much greater depth today at the seminar. And so I'm really welcome I'm really pleased to be able to welcome Karen Amos Karen Amos is vice rector of the University of Tübingen and she will kick off our seminar this evening this morning rather with with some reflections on really this past year but also this this central question about the relationship between educational transformation and who we are as as universities and this will be followed up by a reflection by a discussion of the key partners in this in in this venture around our inside paper. And then in the second part of this seminar today we will open up to a wider discussion with colleagues from the sector from across Europe. But first of all I'm really pleased to welcome Karen Karen the floor is yours. Thank you very much for this wonderful summary of where we've been so far where we've taken this wonderful paper authored by Joe and it is my pleasure to welcome everybody to welcome the friends colleagues expert students and guests thank you very much for joining us on this seminar this morning it is really my sincere pleasure to share with you some of the thoughts that we derived from the great paper authored by Joe and that you know the group which Jan mentioned helped to write and supported but you know also very many thanks to you Jan for bringing us together and for the wonderful support of Ivana. So the Guild has played an crucial part in developing these ideas and when I want to share the thoughts these are not just mine they are really the groups and beyond so special thanks also to Ramica, Yoko, wonderful colleague from our European University Alliance, Sivis who is really very seasoned in discussing higher education policy and has also greatly inspired my thoughts. So what I'm trying to do in this paper is kind of taking a bird's eye view as it were to reflect as Jan Pan-Moski mentioned on our role as universities in the larger ecosystem of the 21st century which puts great expectations on universities to provide answers and solutions for complicated and challenging times that we usually turn as a disrupted age and my main contention is that we indeed should master all of our resources to shape this difficult but also promising part of global education policy which we designate with the terms of the Bologna process and the European higher education area. So my overall thesis if I were to summarize it would be something like this that universities are multi-layered institutions that are simultaneously embedded in different contexts of space and time. This is why I think it's also important to look to the past because the past continues to be part of our present and continues to influence where we're going. So these entanglements of space and time are one characteristic of universities and another one is that the national and the international also constitute a complex interrelationship network or interrelationsgefüge as my colleague Jürgen Schriewer used the term in a seminal paper in 1994 already and this is especially true when it comes to teaching and I think that the national is not simply kind of inside and the international and not merely outside but that it also constitutes you know this very challenging but also promising entanglement. So the first step that I would like to take is to take us back to Bologna University in the 11th century because this is really amazing if we look at the foundation of the Alma Mater studio a thousand years ago then we find a great reminder of where we have been at that time a thousand years ago and I would like to emphasize that with regards to some crucial aspects we already had been a thousand years ago where we wish to be again today in a European space of course a very different European space than as now but a European space nevertheless where students and their teachers moved around freely where language was not an obstacle where students contributed significantly to the governance of their university and the organizational structure by Nazionis in the original Bologna University was only loosely connected to what we mean when we speak of nations today so without overstretching the point but nevertheless to make it in a sense Bologna in the 11th century was more European than the Bologna process that takes its name from this renovated institution is today and why is this the case because in the thousand years since the founding of Bologna the most important shift that has taken place when it comes to university is their embedding in nation states and this has become a trend since the late 18th century was continued in the 19th and then completed in the 20th century where the nation states became or where the nation state became a universal model and nation states and notions of modernity go together and as modern societies are dynamic and changeable they emphasize progress and individual betterment and indeed we might say when we look at for example macro sociological neo-institutionalism or if we take a cultural perspective cultural studies perspective following for example Benedict Anderson we can claim that the fate of the individual and the progress of the collective are inextricably linked in national practices and narratives and in a sense we might even say that the nation state itself is a pedagogical progress oriented institution that builds on human capital of all the letter by establishing common socialization patterns for the next generation passing on values and norms calling on the person which is a social category by itself to contribute to the advancement of society at large and in this context it is that universities came to be considered the keystone of the education system because of their double mission of research and teaching so they assumed their modern roles of motors of innovative and original thinking they became critical evaluators of where their societies were heading they were important players if not drivers of economic success and the letter mainly through the institutionalization of the natural sciences and technical disciplines and just by way of very brief illustration let me take my own university the university as tubing and as an example it was founded in 1477 and the building on the right is one of the original buildings in the very center of town the alter aula which is the main building of where university teaching took place for many many years not to say centuries and 400 years later the image on the left shows where the university had was moving and there you see buildings that showed the success of the natural sciences so these were buildings of physics chemistry biology and just to show the dynamics we have today this is where the this is the current look of the natural sciences in tubing so if we take from this very brief overview a closer glimpse at the 1960s I think it is worth looking at because the 1960s were the the the latest big reform movement before we now have the european bologna process and the european higher education area so the 1960s were characterized by a great enthusiasm for higher education it was an era where great expectations met with optimism and the political will to invest in new universities as harbingers of a brighter future in the early years of the decade an unprecedented boom to establish new institutions in regions away from the country's centers testifies to this international faith a very recent study on utopian universities shows exactly this the international commitment to build new institutions to absorb the growing demand for tertiary education and the conviction that universities would be societies driving engines to quote the title of a famous study it was a moment of modernity of which the often brutalist architecture was the outward sign so this is a a view of the university of Bielefeld exactly following this pattern of having universities new universities and regions where there had not been any before and also having very pragmatic very instrumental architecture short ways to reach the buildings with very functional but at the same time also incorporating this utopian vision these institutions obviously often had a different mission than their older counterparts and they too differ across but also within countries it was a unique period in another aspect too as grand visions of individual designers came together with a commitment to public investment one could cite many famous examples from the UK the University of Warwick being and you know this is a tribute to Joe and Jan I only found this artist impression of the humanities building and not a photograph but it shows I think better than the photograph really the the how the imagination was stimulated in that area and one really feels the utopian moment in it but besides the UK example one could also quote Clark Carr for the US with his vision of multiversity for the California State University system or Helmut Chelsky who is basically the person behind the University of Bielefeld in Germany so the point that needs to be stressed here is that these universities were primarily seen as promoting national projects of progress and well-being projects contributing to the public good and national economic development although they were already more globalized than their precursors now if we look at the great reform movement in the 21st century the European higher education area then we immediately see that this is the most important reform project in our context and a very prominent expression of global higher education policy it is a trend of you know a closer collaboration and shaping policy that we find large international organizations really playing an important part in it such as the European Union of course with its organizations the European Commission being probably the most important one but also the OECD the UNESCO organizations by the World Trade Organization to name only a few the European higher education area comprises a very diverse set of close to 50 different countries and it's a project that is widely discussed in all parts of the world in Africa for example the Bologna process which is often used interchangeably for the European higher education area is seen as a model strategy to overcome narrow regionalisms within countries and to further collaboration and to create synergies hence we can say that the most important difference to earlier reform movements is that the international dimension has moved from backstage to center stage in his inspiring keynote exploring visions for 2050 in a very recent conference organized by the University of Bucharest a colleague from Madrid Xavier Vale Lopez coined the term Europe local universities and this addresses exactly the question well how should European universities position themselves globally in their local manifestations in a recent article Junglut, Marsen and Elkin remind us that the European higher education area was launched along with the 10th anniversary of the Bologna process with the main objectives of creating more coherence compatibility and yeah that the main objectives were coherence and compatibility across institutions of higher education the participating countries committed themselves to the core values of academic freedom institutional autonomy freedom of expression independent student unions and free movement of students and staff and according to Junglut and his colleagues technical issues and mobility moved to the front since then while the concern with values has decreased over time this assessment is corroborated by many other studies dealing with international education policy the combination of institutionalization and normalization of such concepts as the knowledge-based economy or knowledge society mutually reinforcing on all policy levels and by all major actors so that they appear almost without alternative and if we add to this the digitalization which privileges the measurable and quantifiable as an important governance tool the marginalization of concerns with values such as autonomy and academic freedom as well as other grand visions of the university is an almost inevitable consequence however if we look historically we see that the focus on economic aspects was vehemently contested not only in continental europe but also in the uk for example which had always been considered to be more commercial oriented to illustrate I will briefly look at three studies dealing with the liberal versions of envisioning the mission of universities so there are three examples one by Stefan Collini in 2017 who reminded us that for about 150 years after universities started to assume something like a modern form in the early 19th century the fact that they represented in some sense an alternative ethics or antidote to the commercial world was precisely one of the justifications for their existence and to corroborate this view he quotes among others Th Huxley who is otherwise known as a champion of applied science Joseph Chamberlain mayor of Birmingham and one of the leaders of the commercial world in the UK and Ernest Wutherford the father of nuclear physics all of them stress that universities should pursue pure knowledge unhampered by it by application the second instance is taken from Sheldon Rothblaths the modern university and its discontents where he discusses the influence of this humanistic tradition emphasizing the importance of teaching the liberal arts against organized research the example typical for much in the German discussion would be Dieter Lenzons treatise on Bildung statt Bologna Bildung instead of Bologna which somewhat simplistically reduces the Anglo-Saxon tradition to be merely commercially oriented and juxtaposes it with the humboldian ideal of Bildung durch Wissenschaft character formation through learning and scholarship the point that Collini makes and I can concur with him is quote what societies have wanted from their universities has been historically variable internally contradictory and only ever partly attainable that's the point that I made about the expectation today that universities contribute to the economic advancement has really been very strongly contested in the past and to end with a quote by Ernest Wutherford who said at the University of Bristol in 1927 he would view it as an unmitigated disaster if the university laboratories were utilized for research bearing on industry so in a sense why should it be otherwise universities are pluralistic and in pluralistic and dynamic societies cannot but be confronted with different and sometimes even antagonistic expectations to elucidate this even further and to look at ideational streams that inform the Bologna process I would like to draw on a a lucid analysis by Bledler and Imov with the provocative title Bologna emeritus question mark who identify three different ideational strands that have informed the policy in the Bologna process the first one linking Bologna to a political project or now let me name them first so the three ones would be either the mission of the university is a political project or it has a purpose of its own that can be democratic or can also have a different form or universities should provide a marketable service and we find all of these strands in European higher education policy so the first one links to links the Bologna process to political projects that can be varying in focus so it could be full employment it could be societal welfare it could be economic growth so this strand is pragmatic and thus it does not link university or other forms of higher education to a strong ideology such as marketization or democratization but lends itself to pursue different aims higher education in this view is an instrument to solve problems the idea that became hegemonic within the Bologna process was the idea that higher education was to contribute to economic competitiveness this implies governing research to invest in the most promising research projects in terms of innovation for the european economic area regarding teaching in this context implies an emphasis on competencies for further employment and a stress on learning outcomes students are to acquire the competencies central to a dynamic and innovative economy thus the emphasis is less on developing a reflexive relation to the world as rather a form of self-formation that answers to the needs of given circumstances the second ideational stream stresses and this would be very much the Humbulian one that higher education should not serve other purposes outside of itself and is more normative in orientation higher education in this regard is it seen as an end by itself leading out of the Kantian notion of self-imposed immaturity thus university education stresses the unity of teaching and research free research based on curiosity in this view automatically leads to progress and the mediation of research results as well as their critical discussion and reflection go hand in hand higher education is a societally central institution whose aim is emancipatory a second and related aspect stresses higher education as a public good and emphasizes public responsibility thus fighting attempts of commodification the third aspect is concerned with self-determination emphasizing that the members of the institution should organize themselves this may take on different forms but usually results in embracing that higher education should be a democratic right and open to everyone independent of their social economic and other circumstances but of course we also find more elitist positions within this view when this ideational stream is invoked in the Bologna process it is linked to the demand for sufficient public alimentation safeguarding that universities fulfill their mission of being places where research and teaching can be freely executed the last ideational stream views higher education as a global and competitive economic sector in itself in this view higher education provides a tradeable good within the market people with consumers and providers of services the consumers students want to increase their human capital and research results can be sold in a lucrative marketplace this perspective is also normative because the market logic is not considered is not considered to be excuse me because the market logic is considered to be the most appropriate way to pursue political aims but also because it believes in the success of the best in this view research and teaching or looking at research and teaching as a marketplace as the best way to ensure that the best succeed and that progress is attained in teaching and research the free play of the market forces is to be left unhampered from outside inferences privatization and study fees business investments in the field of research and the political safeguarding of procedural self-regulation are hallmarks of these perspectives i'm i need to ask very briefly how much time do i have am i already over i i think no do continue thank you i'm sorry just panicking yeah okay so talking about the ideational streams actually helps us to see that within the process within the political process itself we have different strengths that sometimes conflict with each other and that have to be calibrated and this is one of the challenges that we are facing when we look at the european higher education area so so far let me summarize what what i've been trying to do thus far so what i'm what i was trying to do thus far is to look at the history of the bologna process as part of a global higher education policy that was introduced against the background of common values in the europe of the of the european universities as stated in the treaty of the european union but that is also characterized by expressing variations in the idea of the university contains different ideational strengths and national specificities in structure administration tradition modes of deliverance of research and teaching to reconcile these challenges or reconcile these tensions was a challenge from the start linking the european higher education area to the even grander project of modernizing societies and strengthening the economic volume of europe with the globally pervasive discourse on knowledge societies or knowledge-based economies gave the process purpose and direction and signaling that the process had had reached maturity is shown by the fact that the first part was more concerned with establishing the structures and the legal framework such as the ects system and the two respectively three tiered study cycles but these structural commonalities have been expanded on ever since at the same time they met with the autonomy of the universities and the national so sovereignty is in education and so even though we agreed on common structures the way that they were implemented and executed varies significantly so this is why despite lisbon despite irrevan where we had major communications about automatic recognition and about joint programs this still is a large challenge and one reason for this of course is that notwithstanding this more globalized internationalized higher education policy universities still maintain strongly linked to their local ecosystems and their local employment markets for which they mainly qualify their students and this can lead to a certain tendency to go back to business as usual and your default mode as it were and it has been observed in many instances that sometimes the implementation of bologna is more ritualistic than seizing the opportunities for deep changes so the modernizing potential of the european higher education area is not always recognized and sometimes it is viewed as an encroachment or an imposition from the outside that but this view really completely underestimates the complexity of the endeavor and is very very simplistic and therefore i would like to draw your attention to an image used by bledland imov in 2019 where they where they compared the european higher education area to a huge construction site an enormous construction site in fact with 48 49 individual building owners with their national ministries and with the bologna process kind of as a general contractor so there are many different building plans supervising teams coordinating institutions on many levels that make the endeavor extremely complex and at the same time while construction is going on these construction sites are in full operation so on the one hand it looks very kind of airy something is developed that is not quite there yet and at the same time it's very solid because the institutions are fulfilling their mission and we should also not forget that this takes place within a two or multi-level game context which is the levels the policy levels communicate with each other and feedback to each other so this is why we still find huge variations despite the common orientation that has been initiated with bologna now i come to the conclusion and these are the points that i would like to discuss with you or maybe in in the future occasions further discuss with you first of all i think that we need a mindset that is conducive to disjunctive thinking and with the disjunctive thinking i mean to accept that things are separate and sometimes even disparate and yet they belong together so that opposites can still be united because things put in conjunction disjunction with each other play on different levels and therefore do not constitute alternatives a disjunctive relation is irreducible and cannot be sort of from one side only and although we have philosophical traditions globally for this we tend to fall back to thinking in terms of either or but disjunctive thinking i think is more appropriate to the complexity of the endeavor the second point is that we should reflect on our traditions and values but with the future-dejected perspectives our ecosystems have become hugely complex and the societal challenges to which we need to respond have become ever greater and in that regard i would like to emphasize the role of networks and alliances such as the guild and the the european university alliances as playing very important roles in devising strategies and responses to the disruptions of our times another point i would like to emphasize is that despite of all of the complexities it's a core mission an ongoing core mission of universities to work with young people who are exploring and discovering their talents who become aware of who they want to be where they want to focus on in life and that it's still our core mission to engage with them also in questions of sense and meaning and that in this regard education via Wissenschaft remains a tenet in this sense it is not student center versus teacher centered but it continues to be both and as joe has so brilliantly worked out in the inside paper the future is not either or and this is the the lesson that we've learned from the pandemic and the digitalization we had to undergo during the pandemic that the thing that we missed most was direct face-to-face contact with our students and our colleagues and if we would not have this direct contact we would also have greatest difficulty of making of enabling political and civic engagement so i fully agree with agree with joe that the future is neither fully digital nor fully back to business as usual but nevertheless we have a certain danger maybe of falling back to our default mode and this is why it's crucial or we all think it's crucial now to rethink our teaching mission and to balance these tensions between disruption and acceleration but also growth and development and thus deceleration and contemplation so that we need to carefully consider what which formats we employ in which circumstances when we are training for more technical skills shorter formats also digital formats might be perfectly fine but in other contents we still need to give space and time to mature and develop i would like to end with a quote by peter scott who in a consideration in a two-volume consideration 10 years ago higher education at the crossroads between the bologna process and national reforms wrote bologna has proved this is the final slide i think bologna has proved to be a creative and dynamic process with multiple effects indirect as well as direct and its success has greatly exceeded the intentions and aspirations of those who signed the original declaration however bologna must now 10 years ago confront change economic and political change but also social cultural and scientific change the way forward is for the bologna process to go beyond bologna not so much in terms of adding new action lines that would inevitably encounter political difficulties but in terms of recognizing and realizing its creative potential there is a need for bologna to become more systematic and more open process more systematic because the synergies that already exist and the potential for new connections need to be better recognized and more open because bologna offers European higher education a vital space for dialogue and this I would like to strongly emphasize yes I agree with this assessment and I think that the European higher education area can be a hugely important creative space and we as universities should seize the opportunity thank you very much for your attention and I'm sorry for having overstepped my time limit yeah I welcome dear colleagues dear friends for this wonderful opportunity because as Jan said we have been in a very dense dialogue but we've never been on a panel so this is our opportunity now to discuss and I invite you please for to make your statements and then we will engage in the discussion of them. John would you please go first. Thank you very much Karen I think very much this has been absolutely excellent summary of bringing everything together and the work and I too would like to acknowledge that the paper is a team effort and really the value of the value is by us coming together and I think this is really what today is also sharing how much there is to be achieved by the collaboration so very briefly I would like to start with one of Karen's very well thought through and to the point conclusions that that is the complexity of the ecosystems and the need to move beyond linear binaries and boundaries and of course the role university networks and alliances play in devising strategies and responses to those to the disruptions of our age and of course this includes the design and the delivery of future proof educational model which is a multi-model blends face to face digital empower students to apply learning to global problems balance acquire both disciplinary education and experience the interdisciplinary that is necessary for addressing wicked problems transcend national boundaries and of course one that meets the university's local and national needs in the international context so international educational collaboration essential in this agenda and response directly to the priorities in the for example the current policy context and the european strategy for university however there are paradoxes here that still are worth further discussion in the light of the previous seminars reflecting the work so far today's discussions and also possibly thinking where we're going next and although european and global partnerships have been and are encouraged and have been increasing in the sector over the years the actual benefits of collaborative partnerships for education particularly beyond the sort of designs that are well established like the study abroad often remain implicit and we really need to articulate the value of international collaboration in order to facilitate invent and grow the benefits and of course remove our barriers in those partnerships this is directly related with a second paradox which is the which is between the ideal of openness which of course is fundamental for international partnerships and characterizes as current put the picture so brilliantly succinctly together the the vision for the european education area and the european university alliances in the current environment we bring that together with the limitations that are imposed by the regulatory context and of course we know and agree that rigid regulatory frameworks hamper and stifle the growth of the designs and the ability to really implement change of course we need regulatory context that works and one that actually trusts the sector so how do we achieve this how do we actually a number of initiatives are currently being piloted under the european university alliances we really need to share and learn from this experience one question therefore i would like to discuss today and maybe also in the future is how colleagues who are with us today have seen have experienced our experience international collaboration as a conduit for innovation and particularly in providing our students with more diverse learning experience and the reflection in relation to the capabilities afforded in current regulatory environments i'm going to give an example at the university of warwick where core members of the utopia alliance in the context of which we pilot a model for building innovation from within based on establishing learning communities connected learning communities which bring together existing education research activities this draws on the principle of connected learning and connectedness so learning is drawn existing curricular offering research centers and hubs industry societal collaboration and partnership in their thematic areas this work is designed on a value-added principle they're built on existing good practice and enable utopia to provide a sustainable mechanism for growing and expanding through investing on what is already done and exists and stand well in education research and societal impact instead of solely relying on new developments over the years of the pandemic we've established 30 learning communities we have across disciplines a vibrant meta community of students colleagues and societal partners which provided global learning despite the impacts of the pandemic and as an example that involves something like over a thousand students and the potential of about five thousand over five thousand students in indirect involvement that's great the core question for me the fundamental question is how and where are we going next and how can this really important piece which meets to all the sort of what we have in the education strategy they sort of call for university to stimulate kodagodic innovation for alliance to stimulate kodagodic innovation provide variety of spaces creating living labs all that we actually said how do we move from an experiment to mainstream this is really to me fundamental for achieving what is discussing and this is what tangible support is needed and the heart of educational change the heart of educational change is not on the design is not on this great ideas and startups that in what I often say is that they're a bit like fireworks and then they kind of just disappear we know that for educational change to happen you need the support of policy political status for senior management academic colleagues students professional services everybody but I've got innovations a slow process it involves many stakeholders and that includes of course colleagues who need to balance a number of different demands and priorities and that of course gets us to the question that I hope we will have time to really address tangible how do we incentivize and recognize but I got innovation then of course and here is where we need to be brave and bold in enhancing career opportunities and of course the old elephant in the room challenging silos between research and education talent work on looking into how to make academic career sustainable attractive and the need to acknowledge research education innovation as co-constitutive are critical and require thinking in terms of what does this mean in terms of translating support for policy support for education teaching and learning what are the funding models for education innovation what does this mean for the architecture the design of our universities so we'd like to close with a second question around good practice that colleagues can share in challenging those boundaries silence between research education innovation and how we can work together in providing a more connected synchronized and creative and the fully agree with current creative environment for our students colleagues and society overall thank you thank you so much we are having an echo but it disappeared yeah thank you so much Joe for this extremely dense and absolutely necessary these absolute necessary points that you made because I know that Barrett needs to leave us soon I suggest that we change the order to make sure that she presents her points without being stressed because she cannot be with us until the end thank you so much kind also for for a brilliant presentation I think you summed up so much that we knew and thought about and made it coherent I would like to to pick up on what you said I love the boat national is not simply inside international is not simply outside it is to illustrate the truth of this I would like to to to tell you about the strategy of Orwell's University where we define ourselves as an international campus university connecting Denmark and the world and I think that also supports one of your other quotes we try as a university to do what you say accepting that things are separate even disparate and yet together on the one hand we are very proud and priced that we are grounded in a local context with the campus rather three and soon four campuses to illustrate this our buildings are made of yellow bricks not because it was chosen by the architect but because a local brick factory back in the 1930s where we had our first own buildings donated and overproduction of yellow bricks so I think this is symbolizes very much the local grounding on the other hand our DNA at least when it comes to research knows no borders as you said kind you know commit themselves to the free movement of students and not least staff in the sense of researches I think it would be very interesting to discuss with the panel and with the rest of the audience today what is our future role when it comes to connecting country and the rest of the world and also maybe how do we make sure that connecting is to Europe is also not leaving out the rest of the world but makes synergies to the breaching and especially how I think we can all see that in research cross-disciplinary research will help solving some of the necessity to solve some of the major problems in the world it's climate poverty etc but how can we also make sure and more practically connect between countries and Europe and the world and I think this is even I saw that we have a participant from Kiev this is certainly how can we also through our our different activities support democracy that will be all for me now thank you very much Barrett thank you so much yeah you raised crucial points that align very well with Joe's positioning and we will certainly take up on them and for the discussion round I'll know I'm very happy to invite you thank you Karin and thank you so very much indeed I mean for the for the starting and for the presentation and setting the framework I mean I so much helps my everyday discussions and practices and I just tried to a little bit explain how it does the story I shortly tell describes very well the code by Collini that Karin you made talking about variable and internally contradictory expectation to the universities from societies that's how we're everyday life and I start with a very short historical overview how it goes in our university's history and then I touch shortly for examples from the present and finally I propose what is the key success in our university or go I think we could much too much better but I think we somehow have managed to this contradictory contradictory expectations University of Tato main mission is defined as being one of the leading research universities in Europe and at the same time the center of academic spirit and national culture in Estonia so this contradiction contradictory expectations have written in our mission in the history we have had periods when one or the another of there one or another part of this mission mission were more clearly in front in 17th century our university was established as Latin speaking second oldest Swedish university after Uppsala and the 19th century University of Tato was the only German speaking university in Tsarist Russia being very international really part of the network of German speaking university world but Karin you touched also regarding the tubing and example Estonia was at that time part of Russian Imperium and while because of historical reasons and German landlords in Estonia ruling in Estonia the language and connections there it was really oriented to the Germany but it was a real connection between Russia and Petersburg and Germany and so it was a very very international period in our history of the university in 1919 after Estonia gained its independence a year before Tato university was established as Estonian national university and throughout the last century despite the Soviet occupation that lasted for 45 years the main language of tuition in our university was Estonian of course due to the Soviet occupation the last century was the most difficult in the in the history of our in the 400 years history of our university both in regards to international mission but also a national mission because the Soviet that was not didn't fit to the Soviet Soviet Union so currently Estonian language is one of the smallest maybe the smallest after Icelandic that has its higher education system in national language so these two missions are constantly debated in our university on the one hand we have the obligation to teach the curriculum in the fields of our responsibility in Estonian language on two first levels so in doctoral studies we can we can teach in in English but on the two first levels all main fields have to be taught in Estonian with the 1.3 million inhabitants everybody understands that the number of learners and the number of world-class academic staff with Estonian origin are limited so on the one hand University of Tatu is clearly research-oriented and and for several years we have been chosen to be one of the best universities in so-called new Europe we understand that if our single aim would be to achieve top positions in international rankings we should switch many more areas to English in order to attract more and better staff and students so this is constantly and this is constantly recommended to us by international experts of quality assurance so how to balance just for examples of our everyday practice how how we do this studying in Estonian is as a rule free of charge studying in English is as a rule charged and this is how state signals its priorities mile one-third of our master programs are taught in English only three programs out of 50 curricula are taught in English on the first level or bachelor level so the second example is English taught curricula have different aims so some of them serve national aims actually and some are fully oriented to international aims for example we have several curricula we need to attract graduates to a Estonian labor market for example IT where we need to where we teach currently 10% of our students in Estonia are studying IT that is twice as much as in European Union in average while Estonian labor market needs twice as more IT graduates so it's just impossible to attract more Estonian students and we try to attract international students so some curricula English taught curricula are fully demand-based so graduates go back to their home country for example we we teach medical studies and mainly for the Finnish students who because Finland in Finland the Finnish country's policy is not to open more curricula while there is a clear national needs a need for more doctors there are curricula where we have a unique strength globally like semiotics or IT or analytic chemistry or EU Russia relations or educational technology really there is something that we have we have here we talked to that that that I think it's valuable for the rest of the world so we are teaching these fields in English in order to share our expertise and there are also curricula where we have to teach in English because there are not enough students or teachers in Estonia so so we just have to do it for national aims in order to keep the the the fields still going because otherwise we should have to close these fields in Estonia totally so the third example is we provide one full year language learning opportunities for the international students who are willing to study later in Estonia language there are not of course masses taking this option but there are it has became more and more popular before the war that was really something that Russian students from Russia chose to do because they were aiming or they wanted to come to the European Union to study free of charge here and stay later in Estonia so and the fourth option fourth example is we are recruiting international staff with an that's a clear aim there is 16 percent I think we we are willing to to increase that number and that was also supported by European structural funds but we also have the learning Estonian language at a level to be able to participate in the university work not to teach it's of course nice if they also are able to teach in Estonia but just to participate in everyday work and this is supported and demanded so we try to to attract staff but we also set the set aim to to learn Estonian language so I'll finish that our understanding is that the different roles of the university in achieving its mission must not be contrasted the university will be the universities only if it covers a broad spectrum of specializations and acts as a national university and international university as well as a developer of the economy and society and in our understanding we cannot be a good national university without offering the best possible education that we cannot while that we cannot do without being international both in our students and staff and curricula and connections etc and I think I finish a key for this ability to find the balance between different roles and aims national and international international and economic allies in the university autonomy in Estonia Estonian universities are one of the most autonomous in the world and state has by law very little opportunities to interfere of course they do have the pocket the money but but otherwise they have really limited opportunities to interfere to the university law like so it's the task of the university to find the balance it's not easy and we are debating it every day in practical questions how to do that and I'm very happy if if you have examples or comments how to do it better thank you. Thank you so much. This is a brilliant illustration I think about thinking outside of either all dichotomies or getting out of this tendency to favor one over the other but to emphasize that both perspectives are needed and both are beneficial to universities but also to society at large and I also think it's very smart to invite foreign students international students to study Estonian because I mean we are a rich language linguistic area in Europe and so it's great if students take opportunities to to pursue this more fully maybe than they have in the past. I would like at this point to invite the audience to join us in our discussion also because we do not we want to make sure that the audience is included and you might have things that you might you would like to to share with us from your own experience or where you would like to take up on the presenter's questions which are of course also extended you know to the entire seminar. Maybe it was a brief feedback to Ivana can the audience join us directly if they yes Karin hello everyone we have only one comment from the audience from a vice rector at an Armenian university but I think it's more of as a comment asking for assistance and help in terms of developing a simulation center at their university but I would like to invite the vice rector maybe to elaborate a bit more in the chat while we wait for other questions as well. Yeah thank you so much while we wait I would very much like to take up on Joe's because I think this is crucial for how we further develop our teaching and I think one of the one of the impediments or yeah impediments it's not really a barrier in in the strict sense but it hinders us is that we continue we never have the time to stop and think so we are always developing while fully running and I am also convinced you know that this model that has proven to be successful in research namely to have units you know collectives that the same would be extremely beneficial for teaching to where way too often we still have individuals considering themselves like the sole person on the stage it would be much more conducive to take up on these models of having like these epistemic learning communities comprised of different status groups where students are also included in developing programs and are not just regarded as the consumers of our offerings but exactly how to do this how to scale it I think is is really one of the challenges and I think that Warwick really has progressed quite far on that road and so this is also you know where the benefits of having this communicative space comes in because we can actually share our best practices and share our experiences in this regard absolutely yeah I think that's that's on everything you said so important and something that I've been reflecting on about this concept of time and space that is needed and how we have really addressed time and space in achieving aims for international collaboration and research but our thinking really needs much more we can really probe and push and and sort of challenge ourselves in terms of what this means for educational offering and then the part of it is also how what we have seen from our work over the past one year the importance of the significance for creating that space where we come together has been for me truly invaluable and and it's also something that we need to think how how we where we're going next how we continue we the purpose and the aim we wanted is to start a conversation and we've exceeded our aims but in a sense how can we embed that so that then it translates to the actual practices I think Alne very nice in terms of being able to make this transition yeah absolutely yeah absolutely and and this also I think fits fits nice very I think Alne this was a great example of how the national and the international are always entangled and Barrett's comment was going in that same direction but nevertheless how to put this into practice how to make it happen on the ground remains of course a challenge because now we know that we we need to be more digital when it comes to mobility because we have to worry about the ecological footprint while at the same time we want more of our students to have a European and or international experience but how exactly to go about this remains a huge challenge and let it know connecting you know to the to the wider world because and and and I think this is why it's interesting that Bologna is very often criticized from within but viewed from other parts of the world it is recognized as a very far ahead looking policy process of of globalization it's it's part of a of the world moving together in all these things if I if I can come in with this short comment just to what Joe Joe was asking the question how to incentivize a pedagogical innovation that I think that maybe touches a little bit also the question of soft skills that is proposed by by Anahit Antonian and we were we were discussing or making a summary of what happened during the corona time and with the e-learning opportunities and e-support for the courses and we two did we made centrally sort of two like financing of financing decisions to to support better quality e-support for the for the courses and and made a summary of that and I was asking from the sort of leading the people doing that change and I think we were very successful we really improved the quality and then many many courses apply the quality sign what we have in the in the country and that we were asked I was asking what was the crucial for this innovation or this kind of a jump was it money was it support opportunity like educational designers what we have in the university and we hire to move them was it good examples because we organized kind of experiential seminars or sharing of experience seminars or or is it demand I mean the kind of requirements on the university level that you have to do something and the response was that support I mean the teachers need support to do new things they they would like that somebody I mean of course they they need help in a sense in the practical sense in the technical sense but they also need this kind of pedagogical support so so that if we can save their time and and and show them that they can do better their things that they're doing currently or more efficiently so they are very happy to do pedagogical innovation but they're really the support staff was the key what was said and but every every all the other ones of course are also important but yeah so I think with the food support we can we can change pedagogical innovation yes I fully agree I think this is absolutely crucial and this has to be delivered in a way that is applicable and meaningful to the to our academics right I mean not something that they have to transform and translate for themselves but delivered in such a way that they can use it as a toolbox as it were and go about it yeah yeah I think we also need to go beyond to understand the sort of change and support exactly as you were saying Karen the sort of the interactive and the matrix we're thinking very linearly right so in a sense something starts deliverables deliverables milestone milestone and product it's a very but we know and there is enormous literature on process product the world has changed and I think there was a comment by a colleague that that Bologna in the sense the meanings that it takes also then the tools that we currently use need to change with the complexity as a complex increases and and I think we just really need to reflect taking into the sort of the experience and what we know when the evidence we have because this is all evidence driven in terms of the time that is necessary for educational change and the process by which this is achieved yeah what does this mean in terms of mapping on funding policy cycles in terms of the other life the kind of the life that is actually so critical in order to be able to achieve this and I and this is really to me it's it's the sort of the make of break because the success of a strategy or the success of a pilot or the success is is well beyond the good idea many of the things that we're piloting with tribes a number of times in the past there is a lot of literature is basically the support in the transition once the evidence is there that there is a potential there is a scalability is the kind of process which will actually bring that from a periphery to and sort of a multi-centered type of approach that starts having effect to becoming a mainstream to becoming something that could be available to to to to all students and colleagues and so on so I think this is something that is really timely to address as as we are moving into the next phase of alliances as we're moving into the post-pandemic there is real momentum here that I think with such such a missed opportunity really a missed opportunity to really not capitalize on all that yeah yeah exactly this is where the the time factor also comes in and you know I fully subscribe to what you said Joe this is 100 percent true and we really need to be careful that we do not miss that opportunity because as we tend to go back into our business as as more usual we probably there is the danger that we push what we have achieved aside to just an enhancement and not really thinking radically innovative enough and concerning this and I would like this is a point that you have made many times and all of you have made many times over this is really how are we in the straight jacket of our own quality assurance systems and this is also a comment from the Q&A yes I think this is definitely something we need to address so what's the right balance between making sure that we document our processes that we have what we need in order to trace what we are doing without going overboard with it so this is again like the entire Bologna process a question that needs to be solved on many levels and where the different levels need to be in conversation with each other so maybe the European qualification framework and the national accreditation agencies also need to have a stronger dialogue because this is nothing that universities can solve by themselves this is something that depends on these the structures and frameworks under which they are operating absolutely and I think on that there is a very good comment question the Q&A by Frederick I'm going to pick it up because it's very close to my heart as well in terms of local global and local global languages and particularly English as the medium instruction so that's a fundamental point I'm going to Frederick you are addressing the question to our next so I'm going to pass it on but I couldn't resist because obviously you're very close to my disciplinary heart as well and I think in the spirit of what we're discussing today we really need to understand to move from language to understanding multilingual pedagogical environments and work that we do both in the discipline in utopia we are very much working on multilingual pedagogies and multilingual policies for pedagogical collaboration and I know other alliances are working on it or although this is a very good indication that I don't know the experience I don't know what is happening I should know the colleagues should know what we are doing so that also indicates how we really need to share the learning and the experience as it is actually happening so what Karen has said is so important that everybody is so stretched there is a real danger that we're going to actually go into the demands other demands and priorities are going to lose experience so I think the actual question here is to really understand the rationale as you're saying is very important but I think we actually really need to have a proper conversation around our universities to move from languages to understand linguistic repertoires and multilingual ecosystems and to understand what that means and how we could actually really benefit and empower both our students but also all our partners really to sort of build on the kind of linguistic capital that we have but also think how that could mean a sort of different way of thinking the language the languages that actually we are sort of we are we're offering our programs in and what this means in terms of the regulatory framework so I don't know if you want to pass it on to me. I didn't actually see the question of Frederick why maybe I missed it somehow but I think we are also running out of time I'm just worried about that I didn't know so what Jan is saying about that. I think you should you should certainly answer this Anna. But I mean I but I haven't seen the original question so I can read it to you so balancing the use of the local language with the use of English is a challenge that we know very well at the Ghent University, the University of the Dutch speaking part of Belgium, the with quite a restrictive legal framework the way in which we try to deal with is that the focus should not be on what and other language but on why the rationale which especially I'm really sorry for a sort of I just couldn't resist agree with the vision that we need an intermediate language English to be able to cooperate internationally and we need to cooperate internationally to be able to innovate and maintain the quality of our education and research or can this equally be done in the local language. I'm still afraid that we need this intermediate language for international cooperation because otherwise always always somebody is is left outside because we can share the language I mean they are in the in the Nordic cooperation for example everybody speaks sort of Swedish, Danish, but have a Nordic language and the Finns, Ulle Finns certainly not not so many younger Finns but Ulle Finns also are fluent in Swedish still but then Estonia is left outside so we are always if we were doing the Nordic cooperation then we switched to English so I'm afraid that we need this intermediate language but I'm very much supporting and we're trying to find ways in our university how to use there's something that we have taken as an example from Danish universities this but I think it's practiced in other countries also what they call a parallel language use so everybody can speak in the language that is most comfortable assuming that the other part is understanding and we have tried to use this both Russian language with both Estonian both English because many people sort of I mean speaking these three languages on the level of not always fluently speaking but at least understanding and also to encourage our international staff to to use different languages besides English so anyway it's this is something that we try but I mean we are far away from from reaching there yeah I mean it's a challenge but still an important issue right to balance and to see multilingualism really as an asset in Europe but I agree that English as the closest thing to lingua funka that we have is necessary also to make sure that the link between research and teaching on an international and global scale is maintained so thank you so much for this wonderful discussion for this great inputs it's been great as always to be with you and lovely to have this encounter now on on the same panel thank you so much and I pass on to Jan for the next panel thank you Karin and if I can ask my panelists to search on their cameras and as as they do this if I may start just by first of all with one one comment so thank you very much for to again to Karin and the first panel clearly the the questions of of educational pedagogical transformation line of Bologna is is a question for all of us in Europe and we've had a comment so we we do have active participants with us from Ukraine from Kiev but also from other parts of the European higher education area and I think that especially at this time of war it is it is all the more important that we think about our commonality that we move together and that we also really think together these questions that are also very very relevant in in Ukraine but in very different ways of course around the important of the digital for instance or other really important questions around how in universities relate to societies I'm really grateful to those colleagues in particular for also being a part of this this session and engaging with us today so I'm joined by a number of very distinguished panelists who've also been mostly mostly with us with this project for a while so I'm delighted to welcome Vanessa Dibier-Saintain who's head of the unit in charge of high education policies at the European Commission and at DJIAC and that's quite a dry title quite a dry way for saying that she's really been been crucial for driving change through the commission but also really being a fantastic colleague and somebody who really engages with the sector at a European level from the perspective of policy and it's wonderful to welcome you here. Michael Gabel who's the director for the High Education Policy Unit at the UA and therefore on behalf of its 850 or so members he has been really leading on on high education learning and teaching including the Bologna Process, lifelong learning, e-learning in MOOCs and so forth. We have then joining us Jens Peter Gauld who's Secretary General of the Haier Car the German Rectors Conference and he's been in that position since 2016 the Haier Car really represents almost all of the German higher education institutions and really covers everything that they deal with from higher education, from teaching, research, innovation transfer, internationalisation and so forth and we delight and of course the Haier Car is also closely linked to the EUA Brussels but we're also really delighted at the Guild to have been working with the Haier Car really closely on internationalisation and the question of and how we develop better relations with Africa and finally I'm really delighted to be to welcome Rumitza Yuku who is president of the Board of Trustees at the University of Bucharest and a professor of high education at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences there. He's been hugely active at a European level as coordinator of the UNICA EDU Lab group, the co-chair of the four EU European Degree Subgroup of European Universities and he's also been a member of the EUA Learning and Teaching Steering Committee. So welcome to all of you and really I want to start that there's there've been so many areas that have been raised for us to consider but maybe if we can develop first of all a more in-depth discussion about the point that Karin made around the tension between acceleration and deceleration and and Jens Peter sorry I've got to start with you because I think the because it's you know Bildung statt Bologna you know Dieter Lensen's a really well-known book in in in Germany very very famous I would say a rector of first FU Berlin, a free university University of Hamburg very successful rector but this this notion that in a way we need we need to have a a well-rounded individual who's who's who's nourished in their thinking rather than a Bologna process which is all about commercialization which is all about creating a kind of almost an educational machine and to be fair I mean I think one hears a lot of these kinds of concerns in especially German academia I would say have have we gone beyond that or are we still there what what's your what's your take on this Jan thanks a lot for having me hello to the colleagues hello to everyone who's listening it's a big pleasure to be here and I mean I have to say that the presentation discussions we had in the last 90 minutes were really excellent so it was a really fantastic presentation summing all the issues up I think and I mean to answer or to try to answer your question my personal conviction is that we have gone beyond that I mean it was really important and maybe still is to make the point strong and Vanessa knows that it's it's it has been for several years a kind of strong discussion point let's put it especially between the German research system or high education system and the European Union about this whole issue about being educated via doing university studies or being skilled by them it sounds like the same but it isn't because that's the point that also the the rector you quoted has made it is important from our point of view that it is more than educational machine responding to needs formulated maybe by the economy or so on but as important as it might be or is to make that point very strong I think we've moved a bit beyond that and I would like to illustrate it in the following questions I mean every year we discuss the issue should we get rid of the Bologna process and that does not mean to get to get rid of it does not mean to stop having like bachelor master and exchange and the possibility to go from A to B and and then back so on but shouldn't we stop the process as being a state driven process shouldn't we like grab it for ourselves for the higher education institutions for the university system but I think the recent developments have clearly shown that the Bologna process is more or less I think a very good tool I mean keep in mind that we have we had Belarus joining the process and if you look at the situation now I think it's more or less unimaginable that we could achieve something like that such a huge political step like the Bologna process was in in days like these so we should be glad that we have that and we will continue to have that to be forced to have that balance between let's say state influence on it and the self governing rights and approaches that come with the university system or from the university sector but today I would say that what we can witness in the last year is a more and more let's say content loading approach to the Bologna process in a sense that issues like democratic values autonomy of science autonomy of also freedom of speech and so on have more or less entered into the Bologna process so I think we can really close the circle that this this approach to say it's only let's say a technical qualification machine providing the economic sector with skills we're beyond that I think we have the Bologna process as a really good let's say a kind of shape or a kind of tool which we can use and we can put all the content in that we want and one of it would be that that education is a kind of wholesome process producing more than skills are but it also is a kind of pan-european process that transports our values our ideas how to interact with each other I wouldn't see these sharp distance between an approach of being like an educated person as a result of having gone to university or being merely a let's say an artificial product of some of some teaching machine I guess we're beyond that but it's good to keep that difference in mind thank you and Vanessa can I can I turn to you and ask you I mean so you sit at this interface all the time and you I mean you were really successful in generating a strategy for universities that in a sense has been now endorsed and by you know and in a sense it's with member states you know the commissioners endorsed it so on one level we are very much in the consciousness of policymakers more widely but it still feels very much to the sector that this point of deceleration is very hard to communicate that we also need that that aspect to to to what to who we are is our politicians you think receptive to the to this notion that actually we also still need to maintain these spaces for reflection and for maybe you know for for for creating the well-rounded individual alongside the skills and all the rest the policymakers need us to do or or and other maybe ways in which we should formulate this and better so that politicians get it sorry you're some thanks a lot for your for your question and first I would like to very much welcome the very interesting discussions before and especially on this inside paper drafted by by show it has very much welcome and I hope you've seen that it has really fed into the strategy for for universities and actually last year we took that time of reflection when we had all this consultation process and we met a lot last year if you remember you also told me that you were brain out you know with all the the meetings that we had so we have taken that time of reflection at the same time what the sector told us because it was that it was important to take action so to reflect and take action to move forward you know with with Borona we have been telling and especially as you and Peter said is is that at one point who are wondering are we done with Borona do we need to continue with Borona it's so slow you know and we don't see things really moving up talking about a lot about quality assurance and traumatic recognition and it takes time you know so what we have been asking what the sector has been asking to us is how do European education we are because we have some tools that we don't have through Borona can accelerate the implementation of the Borona principles and the Borona instruments and it's exactly what we are trying to do with some of the flagships of this new perspective for universities when it comes to the European disability that you're carrying and you mentioned before we see it as an accelerator for change to implement many of the Borona tools and the Borona principles that are there but then that are not always implemented everywhere or they're implementing new way that are helping cooperation between the high education institutions so I think there is this need of acceleration acceleration for deeper cooperation between the high education institutions across Europe acceleration of implementing the Borona principles and the Borona instruments but at the same time take the time for reflection when it comes to new initiatives that we have been proposing so if I take the example for example of this objective well I would take the example of two two flagships one is to work towards a possible joint treatment degree and another one is to work towards a possible and I use the word possible which is important a possible legal status for analysis but what is very important and we discussed that together with the member states last week in Paris with a meeting with all the directors general responsible for high education they told us that we need to take the time to reflect on these two flagships for example step by step we should not jump too quickly too rapidly and that we need to take the time to assess to test to evaluate together with the universities to high education institutions sector and together with the member states so it's really to find the right balance between these accelerations with initiatives that can accelerate but at the same time not jump too quickly and take the time to do it step by step and can I maybe because you mentioned European universities and that was also a really important point a sort of concluding point of current this hope that in a sense European universities can also serve as an innovative space to reflect and to and to decelerate again so again if we continue with this with this with this tension right on some one level they are really about transformative change and that's always been the emphasis right their testbeds for something for or something else and of course they have been created for a reason so it's not to deny this but at the same time you do have these extraordinarily wonderful minds you'd be their students or you know academic staff or administrative staff together in a room very often they get to know each other they develop trust and they have opportunities that they've never had before to really take a step back and really take time to really think through what's going on or of course that's where real innovation comes in but it has to be open-ended and it takes time do do it do European universities given the impatience of all the policymakers around them is it realistic to expect them to to also provide the frameworks for for deceleration in that way well this is very important that we give the time and the space for these European universities alliances the best to experiment and to reflect and indeed what you have been discussing with all the directors responsible for high education is that it's not a project but it's a long term initiative so we need to give them that framework and that space to think long term while at the same time be also a catalyst for change so that it can benefit the white sector and it's not easy to grasp it and to understand it it's it's a new initiative it's new we have never done that before so we are all learning together and we while we go away together a bit at the university level at the national ministries level and at a European level what we have seen is that it has already been a catalyst for change you know we have really listened to the to these to these universities together with many other stakeholders like the gift to reflect in the European strategy for universities some of the the flagships like gender degree or legal status comes from proposals from the European universities but what we are aiming at is that these possible solutions for those who wish to go in that way we're not imposing at all but is that it's it's an additional instrument for any kind of alliances of high education institutions not only from these european universities like the cancer recommendation that we have presented together with this strategy provide first steps to address the many challenges that many alliances of high education institutions are facing when it comes to implementing gearchal, spatial, educational activities, when it comes to quality of training etc so these are very important recommendations for my mistakes and for the commission to facilitate these joint trust national education activities across Europe and that will benefit the entire sector not only the european universities so you see that already after three years there are really really bringing changes in terms of policy development while at the same time of course we need to give them support to implement the fantastic objectives that we all have at all political levels for these european universities to put in place this innovative this pedagogy collaboration that were discussed in the in the panel before so we need to give them the framework both in terms of funding but also in terms of policy development so i would take a very concrete example that that was raised before by carol and joe this pedagogy calling innovation is absolutely key to educate and to provide the skills to the young generation but also to the life problems and for that indeed to be able to the universities to develop that so when we talk about pedagogical innovation we think about live in labs we think about implementing life of many opportunities that can lead to my credentials etc and i'm sure we're absolutely right that actually we need to give time to staff to academics to develop that to be trained and this needs to be valorized and recognized within their careers which is not always the case at the moment so that is why we are proposing to work together with the sector to come up with a proposal to valorize this this this academic careers part and the commission is developing the new chancellor condition on the research assessment which is also important reforms are needed but we also need to bring the complementary aspect which is the the teaching aspect of the of the careers of the academics so you see this is something that we want to take the time to reflect at the same time so bring forward improvements and support for the for the academics it's it's a long answer for short no no no it's good and i really i don't really hope we can come back to that point but let me let me just um uh turn to um rumitza and and and maybe um just i'll ask you how how this looks from your national perspective well i mean in fact you sit at a different at a different level but you of course in a sense you can both look at the national of the european given your huge experience also in in in cv's and and uh at the at the eua and so and and and and unica and do do you see that in a sense there is a there is an opportunity really for for european universities to expand that that space and to really innovate not just um uh processes and and innovations but also the the genuine quality and depth of what we do yeah i think thank you very much um for um this interesting question and also for uh the selection was a relevant very relevant uh quotation of um karin's and i like it very much i did the same like you it was probably the main central message uh sense and um from this perspective uh please allow me just to um add to your comments that karin was referring to uh tensions between disruption accelerations growth development and finally uh she used a very nice word contemplation if you remember was something very interesting and so just coming back to your question um i'm raised on the agenda the possibility to um have um at the level of the member states some contemplative attitudes to what's happening in this moment at the european arena and that could be a point if it's the member states or institutions are remaining in the contemplations or if they are going to change something and and that's the idea of having the next step on the agenda from this perspective i would like to stress that in the case of some alliances and you mentioned the here civis and i'm very happy to represent the civis voice together with karin and the colleagues from the tibingan new universities as well we have starting to do something for making an important change at the very beginning the new alliances project has been only appreciated by uh our colleagues and peers as a project and itself and um what very difficult mission for our team to transform and to create some transition between a project to a process sometimes when we are referring to the bologna process i like it very much that it's more or less referring to the process not to a structure restructuring process because sometimes the risk to offer and one way one perspective as restructuring studies lengths durations number of credits dcps but it's not the case and michael it's next was here and very important to underline that a message sent by the community to the e-wave was learning and teaching initiatives and that was an important message and also another one last year an important paper universities without walls they are starting to um more or less putting the community in a reflective and contemplative way not for doing nothing but in a sense to be active on reflecting on new pedagogies and i'm coming from educational uh sciences vitamin educationalist and i believe that all new changes in this segment will be based on new pedagogies and innovative pedagogies and new curricula and new development ways for the new curricula but i'm wondering myself and this is my last comment on that um we need to to probably ask ourselves what do we want to change in this redesigning the academic curricula in relationship with the new ways of teaching and learning because we are referring to practices that in the same times with some philosophy new philosophy one of them micro credentials all the people are using this new concept but this is not a new concept in itself it's a new philosophy for redesigning more or less the curricula in an academic uh yeah and if we should give up we need to ask in favor of what and sometimes this process is more or less a process of learning and relearning by um taking into account the unlearning uh middle area and we are aware that sometimes the university professors and academic staff should be trained for playing a new role um in conclusions from the national perspective the contemplative attitude has been changed uh in the last three years and now we have became more and more uh aware that the way for being activists uh it's the more important and from some alliances uh the perspective from the project from a project to a process that's the point in order to be shifted at the community and the people who are in charge with the dealing with this process thank you very much thank you uh michela if i turn to you and and i i want to ask you something from the q and a about european universities but if i if i put that for the second question i mean i just wanted to pick pick direct me up i mean your strategy was mentioned um university without walls and and i wonder whether um you know as if i if i reflect on karin's talk there is there is a sense in which as you expand the university you massify it you you connected to societal utopias then the the connection to society becomes ever closer but that means almost by definition that the demands of all these students who basically just want to get jobs increase and the demands of societal stakeholders increase the more you engage with them so does this automatically not mean that this old sense of well these universities as these contemplative spaces that that goes and it has to go because universities fundamentally have changed in what they are and in a sense through your strategy even if it's titled you've you've acknowledged that maybe they have never been the irie towers as as as we present them you know and i think they always have been much more reactive to society but i completely agree with you they have to do it in a completely different way than they used to do this and i think this is something that we are facing and this is what we try to respond on but i think it's not a question of either you engage with the society or you develop uh science and research and provide true education in the sense of building i i think there are ways of combining this and um maybe it's it's good to go back to this point that was being made this concern about commercialization of higher education and about you know aligning it with industry in decades ago it's not completely gone of course i'm interestingly i i don't think that the bologna process was actually the culprit there who promoted it on the contrary and if you look on what has been discussed in the bologna process that was what has been published so the higher education as a public good um the emphasis on academic freedom and institutional autonomy but also the definition of of the purpose of university learning which was provided by the council of europe which includes employment employability but also personal development and the creation of knowledge so this is far away from commercial and very how do you say a utilitarian agenda i think the question that i found what i found interesting in carin's presentation and thanks to all four presenters actually these were really very interesting and thought-provoking inputs what i picked up from carine was the quote from peter scott that he did in 2012 and peter scott was always a bit ahead of the game i would say and had the gift to put things that everybody felt somehow in in very clear words and i think that was probably the moment also when the bologna process started to change and move from what it has been before a decade of structural mainly top-down reforms not not everywhere very successful needed a lot of second and third rounds to get things really going to to move to something different and i think what we see today is the bologna process has moved away from the 10 action lines and it also doesn't try to add new action lines we see much more that it becomes about a collaborative process involves a lot of peer learning which includes not only the ministries but also increasingly higher education and qa agencies and maybe this is something that we should consider i mean not as the only possibility but i agree with what jens peter said it's easy to say we do away with it and we try to come up with something better that might not be so easy and if we look at it also from the point that this is an established and rather robust process it works somehow not terribly fast as we have seen okay but it also has some means mainly thanks also to the european commission which puts a lot of funding into it and into projects and it also has a kind of memory and i think that is also one of the reason why this is has got the international reputation it's not just something we meet we discuss and then things go on but we have an agenda actually and i think the point that peter scott also make in his quotation is how to make good use of it from the perspective of the university sector so the points that cari joe our owner and bear it has mentioned here i think that should be really discussed in the in a bologna process and he is a bit of a conundrum still i think while i know the situation that if you talk to university leadership they are not really interested in the bologna process and the issues that it addresses and i hear on the other hand from the university sector that it has the feeling bologna doesn't really pay attention to what universities actually need so i think there is something that we can where we can bridge and build a better connection and i think this is on both sides on the way i mean in the bologna process there is a discussion on how to work more with the sector to become more collaborative and more participatory on the side of the institutions i have never heard so much so many ragdolls talking about recognition and quality assurance and this is indeed one of the impacts of the merits of the university alliances which bring things that were done in the institution somewhere also to the attention of the institutional leadership i mean to put it bluntly if you just want to get a few students mobile the international office always finds a way but if you want to get 50 percent of your student population mobile then you need robust processes and instruments and i think this is what we are discussing at the moment so the instruments are actually there we have to find out are they really good enough and if not what has to be changed to make them good enough for our purposes jens peter do you want to comment on that yeah just just to assist michael um in several respects i think what we witnessed now only talking about germany which is a relatively large system um the the old um opposites um skills here and uh maybe kind of building um on the on the other hand they start to dissolve also i think from the perspective of the industry sector because it's quite obvious that there's only one crucial skill that we need in the future and this is to deal with uncertainty and that's a typical academic qualification and so it's it does not make any sense for the industry sector to ask us for a specific qualification which is like worse a year or two and then it's gone and no longer valid but um to have people who are qualified in a way that um makes it possible for them to deal with unexpected situations to find those solutions in an ever faster changing world and i think that also solves a bit the issue of being of universities of being like temples of contemplation you need that uh element of self-reflection contemplation to think about the whole picture if you want to develop these skill this crucial skill to deal with uncertainty so i think uh if we if we make it right things can connect in this point thank you venessa your your entire body language tells me that you want to get in on this but as as you respond can i also ask you maybe to reflect on the um on the points made in the q and a or the questions in the q and a which is really around the relationship between i i take at the european university alliances and the bologna process you know so so um is this about are the european alliances about diversifying the bologna process are the i mean it's it's kind of in in in line with with the comments that were made but but if you could maybe reflect on this um and another point i think made by roberto vecchi or thrown into this discussion is whether we are now um in a sense we need to rethink the bologna process in line of the changes that that have happened since it was first um initiated or whether you could argue it being a process it is changing quite naturally in response to also what what what what what um uh michael has just said so so maybe just to frame frame your response also in in those two ways yeah now i wanted to react to to what michaela said and i cannot agree agree more with that uh with the fact that basically we have the bologna tools we are building on that to go faster in terms of deepening the cooperation between the high education institutions within europe with for example the universities and other instruments so we need the genes we need all the bologna instruments but at the same time um we expect as well what we do in the context of the education we are to then have an impact as well back into a bologna so it's true process if you want in one side of the bologna process in the other side the high education the high education strength of the european education that are nourishing and each other and i cannot agree more with what michael said that indeed what we are talking about isn't that moving 50 percent of students within the institution and here you need you need really structural changes as compared to a few abilities and this is what we are trying to do with the european universities that are through that are really catapestical change is how do you organize this 50 percent mobility you need strong trust strong recognition automatic recognition you need strong to be trust you need strong qualification system and all this you know we can build on the on the bologna instruments but maybe as michael said to reach this 50 percent mobility we need maybe an upgrade of these bologna instruments also when it comes to um and i was really very happy that by what ronica said as well and when it comes to life from learning micro credentials you know it really requires training which requires a reflection and reflection on how we learn and how we teach it links also to this pedagogical innovation so um so basically all this progress that we are making together i'm sure will bring necessary changes in the current bologna tools and instruments i hope it answers some of the questions in the chat very much uh i i'm i'm coming back a little bit deeper on what Vanessa was previously saying related to micro credentials um if you are interested to apply this concept to one alliance which we're trying to just to transform the internal curriculum it was not very easy for the very beginning to understand the real sense of micro credentials and somehow micro credentials was more or less confused with an instrument for only for life of learning and creating bridges between universities and labor markets and the market of training continuing professional development and other instruments and we have introduced more or less a transition concept micro credentials philosophy because in the respect of the bologna process we have learned an important lesson from this and michael was previously mentioned the continuity and the traditions should be ensured by some way of reflection and more or less a professionalized way for experts who are just contributing to this concept and in and i give you an example uh uh from cv's perspective we have introduced modularization as a substitute for micro credentials in terms of creating um experiences learning experiences for our students and creating some embedding ways for introducing these learning experiences in the traditional curriculum and so the question has been raised uh in this moment we are talking about the real way of micro credentials which is an important concept for redesigning and redefining new curricula in the next decade or we are just making a transition from a reflection which has been focused on uh on a curriculum design to another way for creating learning experiences for our students if we are not looking to our students needs and to try to support their interest and their motivation probably what's happening now we are going to fail or not so much success proposing for for this stage of discussion and this is an important reflection for all for people from this picture thank you very much thank you michael can i just ask you really about another topic that was that was really meant that was quite prominent in in the discussions thus far in in the first part of this seminar which is really around the the the relationship between the national and the international or in the sense the european and and uh you know auna mentioned this really prominently with with a number of examples these these these really and it's a question around languages it's a question around the national mission or the mission of the university as it were um and and it's also inherent in the nature of the university if you think i mean so we started with bologna as as something as it's an institution that was arguably much more kind of that wasn't limited by national boundaries as it were then we've had as karin described that the this moment of the 19th century when the nation became much more central to the universities and now we have these these tensions that that that go with with with the european higher education area or the the european education area and what what do you make of this what what is what is the best way to think about the the relationship as it were between the national and international from your perspective as somebody who is representing these national universities as a european at the european level all the time i mean we are not the only sector who has the problem of national boundaries so to say and i think the european union and of course also the bologna process stands for attempts i mean how to get to an approach towards globalization and foster and emphasize the positive aspects that it can have and make it work for for our societies so but i mean i i found these these examples that in particular oner also quoted very very interesting because it shows you the diversity and also why we have the diversity and that being at a german university in terms of language policies is probably not the same as being at an estonian university and i think that's also something that has been emphasized by carine in actually made i think she referred to this this junctive thinking and that's probably something that when you work in at european level you always encounter that we all know that yeah that there's the feeling we need a standard and then it has to be done everywhere the same and this is not the way of how we would solve our problems so i think that's that's the point that i have here and that also somehow explains why why why why we all cherish transnational exchanges and why they are so beneficial and so transformational for students who are mobile for staff for institutions but also for for policymakers for national ministries i mean we learn from each other we are a bit limited in our imagination when i speak the word university you immediately imagine the university that you attended and while we know that they are different everywhere it's very difficult to imagine how different they are so i think these processes that we have built up for transnational for european exchange and collaboration they are a fantastic opportunity and odometer just explained it how you can experiment try things out explore them in collaboration and in discussion with partners in in other parts of europe and internationally and then see what is a good way forward and that might have different answers in different places so i think this is how we how we deal with this as much of course alignment as as as possible and probably needed but keep this diversity this is really what makes it so rich and this is also what you have already at national level the institutions one institution from to the other is very different here and we have we have somehow policy processes which are not good probably for solving all these problems but at least we can address them and try to find solutions can i can i ask the same question but rephrase this slightly uh ian spitter and remitzer to you before then turning to to you Vanessa for for comment on this because i you know if i if i reflect on our entire seminar series then for me one of the most uh important um arguments that it really made me think um and in really unexpected ways was um a contribution by art van bochover and when we talked about the um the the importance and merits of internationalization and you know i think probably all of us in this virtual room agree that internationalize it you know the more the better because it's it's so important because it's the DNA of our universities but he was really looking at um in this case in this particular case the the the region of leiden and he was he was reflecting on why it is that in a sense you have these international students and then they stream to certain metropolitan areas and they they stream to the kind of metropolitan areas that they're comfortable with that that are also global international etc and and the and the question that raised to me what and so he was asking the question well or that raised the question are there certain forms of internationalization that are really problematic for the region that are really contributing to the hemorrhaging of certain regions maybe in in you know outlying areas of of any nation really um and so that that raised the question of how do we do internationalization well how do we ensure that we do internationalization that strengthens europe and that strengthens all of europe and not just the the kind of areas that are already really strong and booming um i don't know you inspire me so do you have any any maybe reflections on that or answers that if i if i might start i mean for the for the german system it's um maybe a bit of a different animal there's a famous number uh 59 it means that um when you're in germany you're nowhere there's no point where you're more than 59 kilometers far from a university it's a bit simplified but that's basically that's basically what you can say so it's um it's as it is a large system with like 400 universities of all different kinds um it's very well distributed nevertheless we see um we see that concentration like in in in unique or in berlin areas and and so on that's true but it's it's a bit let's say mediated by the factor that there's a strong distribution of the of the university's system in in germany but but let me make one point looking at the future i mean vanessas trust the the meaning and i think everyone agrees to that of the european university networks what what makes them special is that it's the first time that we have at least on the european level an approach which combines all four let's say four corners of the famous rectangle like research um like transfer like teaching learning and like culture you can frame it in a different way but that's basically the thing and i'm i'm i'm coming back to that point because um if we talk about the bologna process teaching and learning and everything connected we must never forget that research leads the university activities and the research scape will change dramatically one thing is um that we're at the the verge of the open access age so the the knowledge will be distributed in a completely different way in the future that that's one point and the second one is quite obvious i mean while we talk here we have very many many questions from our media in germany about the relationship to china and how why we do not react the same way as we reacted to the russian aggression against ukraine given the news we had from china in the last weeks and so on so we don't know how the landscape the research landscape would look like and i mean if you look at russia and their contribution to the global output in research papers we can maybe i mean it's a harsh word but we can maybe live with it at least for a while not to have these contributions if you're imagining we would have the same with china and cut them off from the global research dialogue that would be a completely different game so my point is if we um if we look at the bologna process in the future and everything connected to teaching and learning we must always do that before the background um of how the international research landscape will change in the future years and then we can maybe adopt the bologna process also to issues you raised jan about how to uh put it or shape it in a way that helps all the regions in in europe the the best way so that would be by a short comment for the maybe bigger picture thanks and that's a very hugely important bigger picture indeed thank you rumica do you want to respond in comment looking to to the arguments received the internationalization in this moment for our universities is more or less linked to this two main processes one is the bologna process which was speeding away and now we are looking to the european university strategies and our institutions are just trying to making some connection with two political processes but in the same time we are understanding that from the political way we need to adapt our leadership governance systems learning and teaching areas students mobility and so on and from my perspective internationalization will not be a separate way for approaching universities in the near future in 10 years from now starting with the reflection on universities without walls i'm sure that european universities will be a much more internationalized than they are now and a message which is important it's that from this new european way of having universities or designing or shipping universities we um just reflecting on the transformative way which includes innovative technologies and new highly motivational learning experiences for our students they have changed their personal profiles in this period of pandemic situation and we should adapt our experiences as karin was telling us to rethink teaching adapted being adapted to what's happening in this moment moments through flexibilities embedded diverse mobilities and of course adapt our teaching to students expectations and students needs that's more important and this is internationalization real sense but just just just to maybe add a brief question i mean i what i really enjoyed and made me think about karin's paper was that in a way i mean to think about digitalization not just as another tool that's you know as another pedagogy out there but it's something that changes the essence of who we are because it kind of makes what we do so quantifiable right and so so that's and that's a fundamental shift no i fully agree yes this this is the way that european ways of life it's a part of the european strategy is very important to understand and we can use uh this um uh strategical lines for making internationalization in another way thank you vanessa um can i ask you for maybe if i can come in this panel um really thinking about the national the international uh but also i i think the the the the points that jens peter threw in or brought into the discussion about the wider global picture and the way in which research fundamentally changes and changes the rapid pace in which that also needs to affect our pedagogies and and you know so there's there's a lot maybe for you to maybe reflect on yeah no it's it's a lot of questions so so your previous question on the international the internationalization landscape and how it can be a problem and i think um in internationalization what we need to make sure is that it is as inclusive as possible inclusive geographically to avoid the brain drain and ensure brain circulation and that is really a big issue and that is why it was important when we discussed with the member states about the european initiative that it was very important that uh it really brings together the different parts of europe bringing north south east west and one of the fantastic outcome is that we have seen new cooperation and new cooperation flows that we have not seen before so that's that's very interesting the second element is that it should not stay in the capitals but also go to the global areas so very interesting to see that we have as well um i speak about the european research sciences but i could speak about all different cooperation projects through last month's press because when you speak about internationalization is to make it accessible to a wide range of high education institutions so so all the different types of of cooperation so that was that was the first point and then on research changing very rapidly the fact that all knowledge can be in open access we agree and the first that's very important because that makes knowledge much more accessible to a wider range of of learners and this has of course an impact on the way we learn the way we teach with all this detail and knowledge that is easily accessible but my hope would be also that education can also have an impact on research uh you know when we speak about disney narrative disney pedagogy colonization with the challenge-based approach more interdisciplinary and you know approaches if this could have also impacted the way research is done that can be also more interdisciplinary i think it would be a win-win improvement both for on the research and the education aspect thank you very much uh Vanessa and uh i'm afraid i need to leave it here but maybe just to i i just want to um again i mean i i mentioned this already briefly but roberto vecchi's point i think is still a really important the question of it's very much also in line in in in line with current comments that the the the complexity of bologna is surely a process and michael if i if i can just may ask you to reflect specifically on robertus points that in a sense we um we need we are really moving from we need to think about bologna as a new paradigm really of one way we've gone from defensive processes to in a sense the the the embracing of shared differences i mean is that is that a fair i think so i think that's absolutely right in a way it mirrors much more what the universities really do of course with the exception of what jane spater said no research but also this is increasingly addressed now and to enhance at least exchanges between the european our structures that we built up for research under era the european education area and what Vanessa mentioned already and then the ehea the bfug so i think that's a good point and i think this is this is a call for for both sides if i may say so i mean in the bologna process it's discussed on how we can open up really and have also more impact and communicate better on what is actually done there and how to enhance participation but i think it's also it needs also the sector to stand up and say we want to be part of this and we can contribute to this thank you very much um thank you so much for for our panelists if i may just ask briefly joe and a current to just come back and maybe just reflect on what you've heard for a couple of minutes joe if you want to start yes of course thanks very much jane so i think i've made so many notes but i'll try and be very succinct i think what we are hearing is how much we know to move forward we really need the legacy of the past and understanding of what's happening right now and deny to the future i think we all agree that the university of the future is connected and is international but that's not an destination is not an end product internationalization is an ongoing and dynamic process not a product or series of products its impact on all university practices should do and activities itself the process in and through which higher education can adapt benefit from and contribute to the global world world and the the local ecosystem of our universities but i got you innovation and change of course are prerequisite and as one of you said change is the only constant so in order in order for these to actually really happen we need to go beyond the design it needs to as you innovation and change needs to build on existing good practice we need to this to be identified and it needs to be implemented we need to use it as a spring board for all new developments and to achieve it we need an understanding of the matrix that goes with the educational change time and pace so this in my view should be reflected much more in calls deliverables progress reports the whole way to the way that we have been socializing everything that we actually do on pedagogical innovation and bring that much closer to the way to everyday practice i want to move to the next steps and how as a team we are and in the context of the the guilds strategic leads of education group how we are taking some of that already on board and we're working towards translating the paper and the experience we're accumulating from those excellent seminars to unpacking the experience of members our head and our having with joint degrees and the ways this can feed into the vision for a european degree that will be easy and recognize and will be very sort of central to the strategy and in order to achieve the the strategy but also the vision more importantly and this is what we heard from everybody in terms of the the vision of the mission of universities and sort of national policy frame international we need joint effort joint effort is the only way forward and we also need the spaces to do what we've been doing today and and and we've made much progress and and i think we've the vision in the launch was to provide to start the conversation provide the framework start the conversation and i think and in the roadmap to change and i think we've made much progress the next steps are critical and what i would like to see is that we commit to not allow the opportunity to pass us by we need to continue joining and working together so that transformation is not does not remain a high level aspiration or is not only some pilots or some designs or more experience but becomes a reality the reality that will be experienced in our institutions and the legacy that will be behind i'm going to stop before i do that a personal note for me i would like because i think i can see yan he will take the floor and never give it back to me so well for the seminar at least i would like to thank my colleagues uh current marriage nowness for a generation of time and spirit it has been a privilege to be in the team i can't tell you how uh intensive uh fantastically stimulating exciting uh it is it is an absolute privilege and i'm looking forward to all the future uh work uh that that that we're doing together i would like to especially thank karen for this wonderful closing seminar that is the very important milestone of our work and our collaboration uh and of course i would like to thank uh for my and the guild for enabling supporting and hosting uh hosting this amazing journey of the past year uh and uh the support for the future aspirations you have been a wonderful host uh i would like to thank you vana and the communication team uh we couldn't have done it um without you uh thank you to the communication team for bringing the work to the sector and amplifying the voice and the reach uh and of course uh last and uh very important and more special thanks to yan um both as the guild secretary general and a colleague professor at the university of warwick uh for bringing us together enabling the team uh the significant input uh being fantastic host uh and leading the project so thank you very much yan uh and i'm going to pass them back to you thank you sorry i i really don't deserve it it's really it's really a team effort and and and and here especially ivana's uh all fantastic work but uh karin yeah well i can only you know fully uh underline what joe has just said it has been a wonderful experience and thank you so much for this last event in the series of workshops we had and especially many many thanks to this last panel i i'm so grateful uh that we end on the same plane of saying the balonia process actually always has been much more complex even uh in the times when it was perceived to be about technicalities the way that these were implemented and this is something that we are also fighting with right is because they were implemented in so many different ways uh that if we think about joint activities we are encountering um obstacles and difficulties so the autonomy of the universities never was um denied or was questioned uh we always um institutionalized the process the way that we thought appropriate in in our contexts but i'm also uh very much in agreement with you that we have reached a completely different stage in this and i'm especially um grateful and there are also we with the panelists that the networks and alliances will be crucial motors of developing the the process um and um i also fully concur that what brings us together uh in the final event is to provide um the attitudes the mindsets but also the skills and knowledges to deal with uncertainty because it will stay with us and unfortunately the 21st century has not just been the blessed one so far we started with 9 11 uh we went through crises uh in the european union we have uh the war in ukraine right now uh so the first 20 years um have always been disrupted uh in or disruptive in many senses and so universities will definitely um uh be called upon to fulfill their societal missions uh on all layers of the process so thank you so very much um all of you uh for your strong commitment and collaboration in this in this process it's wonderful to work with you and um we're very much looking forward to continue the conversation thank you very much and there's no better way to end than those two last statements i really want to thank the participants again thank you for your fantastic time and your fantastic contributions for me really ensuring that we're having these conversations about pedagogical transformation and change our universities together in um so that we don't stay in our silos but we really do reflect on what's going on across and that we that we you know develop this momentum across and i think it's really important to note um that the terrible events in in ukraine at the moment they have been really very much on our minds um and clearly being part of the conversation and it is really important that uh one i'm very grateful for the european commission to continue to lead some of these dialogues too and we've heard how how in sense the european universities provide this incredibly important space to make um to to bring up all these issues to the highest levels in our universities but i think i think we also agree that that we also really need to think about these this momentum in a in a truly european space and not just so that in that sense the european commission the european union can maybe help lead that those conversations but it is something for all of us and that's also one of the really important achievements of the european high education areas to really have brought to have brought us together and to continue to be this important space for us um as as we not just reflect on but also bring about change as we both decelerate and accelerate at the same time thank you very much to all of you thank you so much karen for a fantastic paper thank you bye bye