Future of higher education: ZLL presents innovative ideas at the festival

Future of higher education: ZLL presents innovative ideas at the festival

The University:Future Festival with the motto “Imagine” took place from May 13th to 15th, 2025, in which the Viadrina Center for Teaching and Learning (ZLL) was actively involved with four contributions. The event, which took place in a hybrid form both online and in several cities such as Berlin, Berlin, Braunschweig, Graz, Nuremberg and Zurich, is considered one of the largest platforms for discussing the digital future of higher education. The festival was organized by the University Forum for Digitalization in cooperation with the Innovation in University Teaching Foundation and the Stifterverband.

Anna-Lydia Ast, one of the ZLL representatives, was positive about the opportunity to present innovative teaching and learning approaches. These approaches are intended to help better address the challenges of higher education in the digital age.

Viadrina contributions and workshops

The ZLL's various contributions covered central topics in university development. Anna-Lydia Ast and Dr. Lena Hotze on the formation of interdisciplinary cooperation groups, known as Faculty Learning Communities, which are important for sustainable university development. Dr. In her talk, Christin Barbarino highlighted the value of shared knowledge production and presented the joint project Co-WOERK, which focuses on Open Educational Resources (OER).

A particularly interactive workshop was led by Roksana Inga Rybicka. She focused on supporting creative writing through artificial intelligence (AI) without losing the individual voices of the participants. To promote critical thinking and changing perspectives, participants took on various roles, including AI developers and those affected by an AI decision-making process, to resolve ethical dilemmas.

The relevance of future skills

The ZLL is also active in researching future skills, a concept that has been the focus of its work since 2016. The core questions asked include, among other things, the skills that future employees need in order to sustainably shape social changes. The research follows an educational theory-based, social-ecological approach to competencies that are important for university graduates.

Implementations such as the FutureSkills study, the international Delphi study and the open access book on the subject of higher education in a changing world show the ZLL's commitment in this area. The identification of “Future Organizations” and the associated need for new strategies and concepts for lifelong learning are also central aspects of this research.

With all of these activities, Viadrina will continue to gain importance in the context of the future of higher education and future skills and will help to establish new models for skills development.

A large number of the festival's contributions can be followed on YouTube, allowing for wider accessibility and discussion of the topics presented.