Set against our reimaginative and transformative ambitions, this project has five main objectives. Firstly, it seeks to create active and unbounded learning spaces where teachers, students and digital education experts meet physically and virtually to reimagine traditional university habitats, formats, practices and infrastructures. Secondly, it aims to ‘hack’ existing pedagogy by finding creative ways of overcoming known barriers and obstacles to more innovative and transformative pedagogies. Thirdly, it endeavours to create a lasting legacy by building new places and spaces for the production of knowledge and open educational resources. This includes static and rich media, a digital makerspace and a MOOC that are freely available and can be shared through various powerful networks to inspire and support other European educators. Fourthly, it aims to develop teacher digital competences by providing self-assessment tools and empower the European teaching and learning community to utilise computerized systems in innovative, creative ways to improve and develop more effective digital teaching and learning capacities. Finally, the project is based on principles of equity, diversity and inclusion and all activities will aim at meeting the present needs of teachers and students since this will support them also in the future.
At the core of "Hacking Innovative Pedagogies: Digital Education Rewilded" (HIP-DER) is the goal of fundamentally re-imagining traditional university education. This innovative project responds to the challenges of building a more equitable and inclusive digital society and emphasises the transformative role higher education can play in developing more active, digitally competent and diversity-minded European citizens. The intention is to rethink how to use new digital technology in more creative ways that support transformative pedagogical approaches. Such approaches in this project have an underlying philosophy of listening, responding and co-creating with networked communities of teachers and students and do so in innovative ways that allow us to ‘rewild’ out-of-date models of university education. By rewilding we mean processes that start by removing or unbundling traditional structures, objects and practices and refurbishing them with those more native, fit-for-purpose and transformative to a given environment. Rewilding is a response to the way many digital technologies have been merely assimilated into traditional ways of teaching and habitats of learning. It seeks to disrupt traditional approaches that have been slow to respond or lack agility to take advantage of exciting new pedagogical and interdisciplinary opportunities for 21st century learners. By hacking innovative pedagogies this project also seeks to re-envision the current higher education ecosystem by finding ways to connect and grow patches of unique teaching and learning into rewilded habitats of transformative pedagogy. Such habitats will also seed and support digitally-enhanced pedagogy that is equitable, diversity-minded and inclusive for all learners.