Motivating role of the University Alliance on Engineering Education – Reflection of CTU in Prague

Practice Paper Recommended citation: Malečková, N., Mottl, P., Dohnalová, L., & Zoula, M. (2025). Motivating role of the University Alliance on Engineering Education – Reflection of CTU in Prague. In Kangaslampi, R., Langie, G., Järvinen, H.-M., & Nagy, B. (Eds.), SEFI 53rd Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), Tampere, Finland. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17631529. This Conference Paper is brought to you for open access by the 53rd Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI) at Tampere University in Tampere, Finland. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License. Motivating role of the University Alliance on Engineering Education – Reflection of CTU in Prague N. Malečková a, P. Mottl b, L. Dohnalová c, M. Zoula d a Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic, https://orcid.org/0009-00082801-6051 b Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic, https://orcid.org/0000-00033388-3658 c Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic, https://orcid.org/0009-00040356-2751 d Czech Technical University, Prague, Czech Republic, https://orcid.org/0000-00023235-8176 Conference Key Areas: Quality assurance and accreditation of engineering educational programs, Building the capacity and strengthening the educational competences of engineering educators Keywords: Innovation in Engineering education, University alliances, New teaching formats, Teaching support ABSTRACT The European Universities Initiative (EUI) that was launched in 2017 represents one of the most important drivers that boost cooperation within the European higher education sector and significantly emphasizes the implementation of new teaching formats as part of an answer to the significantly changing current world. This practice paper focuses on the motivation and support role of the university alliance towards its member universities in reshaping their approach to education. It often brings into discussion new agendas, which results in significant changes within the educational process at particular universities (be it changes from above or from below). We primarily focus on the experience of the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) achieved from its membership in the European University EuroTeQ that was established in 2020 within the EUI. This paper highlights how the influence of the University Alliance initiated significant changes in the approach to the teaching process, including methods and support that improved the impact and outcomes for students of various engineering fields at CTU. After almost five years of participation in the EuroTeQ alliance, the main achievements for CTU were the significantly broader implementation of new teaching formats and methods across all levels of education and the initiation of internal support for teaching. Achievements and changes in education resulting from CTU’s participation in the EuroTeQ are mentioned and further discussed. 1 INTRODUCTION The Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU) is a research-oriented technical university with more than three hundred years of history. The general approach to the educational process at CTU was historically more traditional, based on classical teaching formats with only limited implementation of new ones, such as PBL or CBL (project-based learning and challenge-based learning, respectively). This is mainly due to the emphasis being put on research activities and scientific output of the university and its academic staff rather than teaching and education, which is also reflected in the fact that majority of CTU’s budget goes towards research funding. Hence the educational role of the university was systematically being overshadowed by its role in research, practically at all levels. CTU became a member of the European university alliance EuroTeQ at the end of 2020 and has been considerably influenced by it since then. CTU’s participation in the alliance has sparked internal discussions at different levels of the university on a variety of topics related to engineering education. EuroTeQ Engineering University, as a university alliance, comprises mostly technical universities from various European countries with different historical backgrounds and endorsing the common vision and mission (EuroTeQ 2025) the main goal of which is to implement new learning formats within its joint learning environment. 2 INSPIRATION, SHARING BEST PRACTICES AND IMPLEMENTATION Partner universities within the university alliance inspire and support one another in implementing their joint mission and goals. As the main goal of the university alliances established under the European Universities Initiative (EUI) is to establish a joint international campus for this purpose (European Education Area, 2025), the universities can establish a learning network within the alliance. The first level on which universities can learn from each other is the fundamental expertise on improving education. Individual member universities can learn from early adopters of educational innovation who have already gained experience in experimenting with new teaching formats such as project-based or challenge-based learning (Fuchs et al. 2022). CTU experimented with new teaching formats on a smaller scale in the past, but with the EuroTeQ and its significant focus on CBL courses, the initiatives regarding teaching innovations have recently become more prominent. New teaching formats implementation As the main goal of the EuroTeQ university alliance is the innovation of education by implementing new teaching formats, CTU started to focus more on these and has introduced them in various study programmes at different levels of study. The alliancewide initiatives mapping the implementation of new teaching formats that were started by the EuroTeQ university alliance (Voll 2023) provided the initial motivation to focus more on these activities and have significantly enhanced their recognition at the managerial level of the university as well as the general willingness to adopt them. During the first phase of implementing new teaching formats at CTU, the leading initiative was the development of the EuroTeQ Collider, which introduced new challenges for CTU’s teaching and support staff. In essence, Collider, a joint CBL initiative of the EuroTeQ alliance (EuroTeQ 2025), brings together teams of students from various backgrounds and fields in solving real-life challenges and creating a more sustainable future. At CTU, Collider represents one of the first university-wide implementations of CBL, and as a relatively new teaching format it also brings a lot of challenges for both teachers and students and raises questions about the real format, timeline, and the essential support needed for its successful implementation. This initiative could be used as an example of good teaching innovation practice that is shared within the university alliance. As evident in the EuroTeQ Collider comparative study (Helker et al. 2023), at the beginning of its development in 2020, the experience of individual partner universities with CBL courses and their implementation was significantly different with respect to teaching skills, support, infrastructure as well as cooperation with external stakeholders. The collaborative environment within the university alliance then provides various resources and good practices on how to overcome specific challenges and obstacles. The CO-CREATION – A Roadmap Towards Socially Responsible Engineering Education (Voll et al. 2024) that was written by authors from various EuroTeQ universities could definitely serve as an example. Teaching quality and support As previously stated, historically the educational role of the university seems to have been overshadowed by the predominant focus on research. The focus on quality of teaching at CTU was limited, and there was a general lack of systemic support. Attempts to introduce new teaching formats at CTU on a wider scale have sparked internal discussions at various university levels about essential teaching support. These discussions were also driven by bottom-up initiatives advocating for teaching support, usually led by early-career teachers such as doctoral candidates who lack mentoring, methodological guidance, and other resources. The internal discussions regarding quality assurance of teaching have been sparked by these activities at various levels of the CTU and further influenced by the changes of national legislation in Czechia (e.g. Higher Education Act) during past years. The quality assurance of education is now becoming an integral part of the internal evaluation performed under the supervision of the Internal Evaluation Board (CTU 2025). Crucially, the need for institutionalized teacher support is now recognized at a managerial level within the university. Initial steps to set it up and thus follow the example of other EuroTeQ universities have already been taken; steps such as submitting a proposal for external grant funding, allocating human resources, gathering supportive materials and tools etc. 3 RESULTS AND ACHIEVEMENTS Collider and beyond The EuroTeQ Collider, a flagship CBL initiative developed within the EuroTeQ university alliance, represents the first university-wide CBL course at CTU implementing new teaching formats. The support and exchange of best practices among the EuroTeQ partner universities participating in Collider activities were essential for its successful implementation, despite some unexpected obstacles caused by the pandemic restrictions that affected the first two rounds of the Collider. With over five years of development and four completed rounds, and a fifth currently in progress, the Collider can be regarded a success, offering valuable insights and experience, e.g., development of a sustainable network of cooperating industrial partners in long-term context. The Collider-based experience at CTU prompted a reassessment of the university class arrangement for CBL and the implementation of essential teaching support based on Collider evaluation within EuroTeQ (Helker 2023) for this particular course. Wider implementation of this new teaching format at CTU is currently reaching its limits due to the availability of resources, such as teaching and support staff, budget, legislation, and others. The internal cost analysis of CBL courses in comparison to traditional ones was performed at CTU in 2023, and its results showed that a significantly wider implementation of CBL is currently over the teaching budget as CBL courses are several times more costly. Due to these reasons, the rebuilding of the curricula is likely to take longer than previously expected. Nevertheless, the direction has already been established at CTU. The Collider and other CBL courses organised in the last few years at CTU, and which were included in the evaluation and research activities performed by the EuroTeQ expert teams (Voll et Al. 2023 and Helker et al. 2023), continue to generate new knowledge and skills on which CTU can further base its wider implementation of new teaching formats. The university alliance also provides more sophisticated methodology and innovative tools for evaluation of courses that are using new teaching formats, such as the CBL compass (van den Beemt et al., 2022), that was used for the mapping and evaluation of several CBL courses at CTU. Moreover, shared knowledge and best practices within the EuroTeQ alliance provide a stimulating environment for it. The evaluation of various CBL courses at CTU (see Fig. 1) during the past few years indicates that teaching support is mostly missing and is one of the limiting factors of wider CBL implementation at CTU; among others are for example methodology support, technical support and suitable teaching spaces. Wider implementation of new teaching formats at CTU is further limited by its relative costs in comparison to more traditional forms of teaching, which has been proven by the evaluated courses and EuroTeQ Collider. As the “pilot” implementation of new teaching formats proved its benefits and impact for students, the current financial limitations slowed down the process a little bit and switched the focus more on quality than quantity. Fig. 1. Example of CBL-compass result at CTU made as a part of the analysis in Helker, 2023 The Teachers’ club and Teaching support A noticeable new endeavour in the field of pedagogy and teacher training of PhD candidates and other academic workers is the recently established Teachers’ Club at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Despite pedagogical activities not being obligatory anymore for PhD candidates at CTU, it is rather common for many of them to teach undergraduate courses related to their field of research and expertise. Moreover, one of the goals of PhD studies in general is to prepare one for their future career in academia, of which teaching constitutes an integral part. At the moment, CTU has no dedicated institutional support and training for university teachers and lecturers. In this context the Teachers’ Club has been formed in 2024 as a joint effort of several PhD candidates and professors. The main aim of the Teachers’ Club (2024) is to create a community of teachers from around the university to share experiences, best practices, and insights into the education process. The main activity of the Club are moderated discussions usually focused on a specific teaching-related topic, such as giving and receiving feedback or AI in education. Within these discussions the participants share their experiences, exchange views and discuss the best practices and potential points for improvement in their teaching work. The Club’s website also includes a curated list of foreign educational events available to anyone who is interested and would like to participate. The website also serves as a notebook for meeting notes and miscellaneous knowledge related to the topic of teaching. Last year, the Teachers’ Club organised 11 discussion sessions and attracted around 40 individual participants from the ranks of PhD candidates and other academic workers such as associated professors and professors. In 2025, on top of the semi-regular discussion meetings, the organisers of the Club are planning on implementing a mutual teacher observation programme to provide teachers feedback from their colleagues or supervisors. The Club also seeks to augment the database of materials and knowledge accessible at their website. The Teachers’ Club initiative, stemming primarily from the need of PhD candidates, who participated in teaching undergraduate courses, has evolved from a previously informal grouping “Technical Society for Teaching” which has in turn been inspired by a similar prior initiative “Dej Vice Uceni” (in translation “Give more to teaching”). That there have been several such activist groups focused on the development and improvement of teaching practices, points to the fact that there has been a consistent call for any such support for a few years now. This is also exemplified by the results of a recent questionnaire distributed among all PhD candidates at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at CTU in Prague, in which almost 60% of students have noted that they would welcome some form of support in their teaching activities, be it courses, learning/teaching materials, workshops, etc. The CTU membership in the EuroTeQ alliance allows the university and its students to have access to the materials and practices shared by other participant universities, at many of which teacher support and development is much more well-established. While the Teachers’ Club is still overwhelmingly run on the voluntary level, it is recognised by the leadership of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering who are currently setting up a plan for more wide-spread organised support inspired by the examples of other universities within the EuroTeQ alliance. At CTU, some good examples of teaching support can already be found in recent history. The university-wide technical support for online and hybrid teaching that started spontaneously in a very short period during the pandemic being one of them. These practice-proved support activities (e.g., recording of lectures) have continued to be used despite the end of pandemic restrictions and have significantly improved the quality of hybrid and online courses at CTU. Among other more prominent and impactful initiatives is for example the opening of a teachers’ room in the university campus in Dejvice. 4 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS The provided examples of the recent development at CTU in Prague indicate that being part of the university alliance can significantly contribute to and motivate the crucial changes in teaching processes that reflect current trends in pedagogy and industry at each member university. The CTU benefited most within the first years of the university alliance formation from using best practices and examples from the other member universities on how to successfully implement the new teaching formats like CBL and see the real-life benefits of established teaching support at the university. The joint mission and goals, sharing of best practices and methodology within the alliance, could significantly shape and support further development of engineering education at technical universities for their students’ benefit. The trustworthy environment within the university alliance is essential for success in the future and represents a key added value for the effective international cooperation at various levels of the university. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper was supported by Erasmus+ Project No. 101124320 EuroTeQ Engineering University 2030. REFERENCES Czech Technical University in Prague. (2025). Internal Evaluation Board. Retrieved March 19, 2025, from https://www.cvut.cz/en/ieb/internal-evaluation-board European Education Area. (2025). The European Universities alliances in action. Retrieved April 1, 2025, from https://education.ec.europa.eu/educationlevels/higher-education/european-universities-initiative/about? EuroTeQ Engineering University. (2025). About us: Vision & Mission. Retrieved March 12, 2025, from https://euroteq.eurotech-universities.eu/about-us/vision-mission/ EuroTeQ Engineering University. (2025). Initiatives: The EuroTeQ Collider. 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