We work to expand the potential of technology in education through professional development, where broad interdisciplinarity is at the core.
We are actively looking for new partner institutions that want to work strategically with professional develop and technology education. Feel free to contact us!
During 2020-2023 we develop a ground-breaking concept and course on technology education targeted at all higher education teachers in Denmark. We call it Teknosofikum.
Nationally and internationally, across the educational systems, technology education is increasingly recognised as central to the society of the future. Professionals in all fields need to face the transformation that technology brings in terms of automation, decision-making, and regulation.
This calls for skilled higher education teachers in all subjects. Teachers prepared to engage reflectively with these matters in their teaching activities. Teachers that will support students to acquire abilities, think creatively, and become competent professionals themselves.
The partner institutions have dedicated themselves to help higher education teachers to become ready for the future of technology education - and we invite everyone nationally to contact us for participation or future collaborations.
Technological trends impact on new professional roles, decisionmaking processes, regulation, and use of data analytics. Professionals from all fields and disciplines need to upgrade their knowledge about technology-driven processes that are changing society.
Technology is more than a tool; it is an active agent interrelated with human life and society. Some relevant perspectives from philosophy and cultural anthropology can ‘defamiliarize’ our understanding of technology and thus help us reflect on societal transformation at a deeper level.
Teacher professional development seeks to achieve not only an increase in pre-defined skills and competences, but concrete changes in teaching. Practices rely on learning theories, which are largely unknown. We interrogate theories to explore their implications for teaching and learning practices.
Higher education teachers work with research, business, and industry. Interdisciplinary dialogue can provide a very fertile exchange about technological trends across different fields of expertise. It also supports discussions and mutual inspiration about activities, tools, and strategies to use in teaching.
The purpose of technology education it not only to make the most creative use of technology, but also to be aware of the critical and ethical issues related to it. This is why we prefer the term TechEd to the more commonly used EdTech. In short, TechEd focuses on the human factor while EdTech puts an emphasis on the tools, or educational technologies, as they are known.
Developing a concept of technology
Technology can be defined in many ways: e.g. as a tool or a service to improve human life, as a machinery or an equipment to develop scientific knowledge, as the sum of techniques, methods and processes used in a specific branch of knowledge. In our concept, technology is an active agent interrelated with human life and society.
Your gain of Tech
In the Tech part of Teknosofikum, you will encounter an initial framing of technology seen from different perspectives. Then, subject experts from the fields of Law, IT, and Design will explain what the most relevant tech trends in society are, and how they affect the professions across the fields. You will be invited to relate the new knowledge with your own practice and reflect on the competencies your students need to acquire.
Developing a concept of teacher education
Teacher professional development is both specific and open-ended, it addresses practices as well as theories. Our concept of education tries to respect this complexity, by offering not only tools and guidelines for teaching in higher education, but also reflections on the variety of formats that can be implemented in teaching.
Your gain of Ed
In the Ed part of Teknosofikum, you will know about different learning theories and teaching perspectives, which are constantly related to your own practice and experience. You might discover that your beliefs and intentions do not correspond to the actions you have undertaken in teaching a specific subject or with a specific group of students. You will explore best practices with educational technologies and get inspired about teaching strategies and active learning methods.
Teknosofikum is a design-based research project, where the concept and design of the final course is developed in multiple iterations. This approach comprises both qualitative and quantitative methods for research in the following areas: (1) technology education; (2) teacher professional development; (3) learning theories and practices; (4) interdisciplinarity in higher education. At each course edition, new ideas and activities are tested with the participants, and their feedback is used in the process of re-design. Ultimately, this design-based research approach aims at making Teknosofikum relevant for all academic fields.
See our publications and presentations below:
Presentation of Teknosofikum at Digital Learning Day 2021
