The CoCreate Project is One of the ENLIGHT 2025 Call Winners!

We are excited to announce that the CoCreate Project, coordinated by a team at the UG, has been selected as one of the 2025 ENLIGHT Call winners! This project aims to take a student-centred approach to transforming STEM education by fostering collaboration between students and lecturers in the co-design of resources. Find out more about CoCreate and the people behind it below!

What is the main goal of the project? Who are your collaborative partners?

The CoCreate project is an initiative of the ENLIGHT universities of Groningen (NL), Göttingen (GER), and Bordeaux (FR), with the University of Bristol (UK) as an associated partner. The project takes a student-centred approach to transforming STEM education by fostering collaboration between students and lecturers in the co-design of resources. These resources aim to equip STEM teachers with inclusive strategies for purposefully teaching transferable skills, thereby enhancing the employability of STEM graduates in a global work context.

The first phase of CoCreate involves gathering student perspectives through surveys conducted at all participating partner universities. The results will provide a comprehensive overview of students’ educational experiences and will be used in the next phase to inform the design of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) targeted at teachers. This e-learning course will adopt a flexible, modular design to enable efficient learning experiences tailored to the needs of the target group. It will offer practical examples from fellow teachers, insights into the perspectives of (their own) students, and optional features such as ready-to-use educational resources, portfolio certification, and blended follow-up activities. The MOOC content will focus on initiating interactive teaching strategies and fostering (intercultural) communication skills within educational design.

What inspired this project idea?

The initial target group of the CoCreate project is teachers in the STEM context, as this group often focuses primarily on teaching content rather than skills. This also connects to our own experience in the project group as educators and educational developers. In recent years, however, the integration of skill development within content teaching has been increasingly emphasized as a necessity for enhancing the employability of STEM students, particularly with regard to effective teamwork and communication skills.

The CoCreate project is motivated by this challenge and aims to use student voices as a starting point to equip STEM teachers with flexible resources and a sharing platform to foster these skills and to integrate interactive teaching strategies into existing teaching practices. As a result, teachers and students co-create a future-proof learning environment, supported by flexible resources developed through the CoCreate project.

Why is this international collaboration essential to your work?

Within this international collaboration, students from all participating institutions contribute input through a shared survey. The survey results will provide qualitative and quantitative insights into which transferable skills students consider useful, which teaching practices they perceive as valuable and effective, and which suggestions they have for improvement. The ability to gather these student voices from different universities and educational environments across Europe makes the results particularly valuable for comparison and for highlighting commonalities across contexts.

Furthermore, in the development of the MOOC, the project involves teachers from all participating institutions by inviting them to provide feedback on the design process and the resulting resources. Through this collaboration, an e-learning course for teachers will be developed that is collaborative in itself, supporting context-specific teaching while remaining flexible enough to meet a variety of teaching purposes and needs.

How did the collaboration come together?

The members of the project group initially met at previous ENLIGHT teaching and learning conferences. In 2024, during the conference in Tartu, one colleague raised the question of how to initiate and facilitate the integration of intercultural communication skills into content teaching within the STEM context. This informal discussion led the group to hold several online follow-up meetings to develop a survey among STEM students.

What impact do you expect this project will have for the University of Groningen and the ENLIGHT network?

The project group at the University of Groningen already experiences strong potential for bringing teachers and educational developers together and for facilitating exchange on this theme with professionals from other ENLIGHT institutions. We observe that the concrete outcomes of the project initiate conversations and help to engage teachers and educational developers by inviting them to contribute feedback, existing resources, and examples of good teaching practice.

The project team intends to test and evaluate the first version of the e-learning course in collaboration with additional ENLIGHT partners who have not yet been involved. Through this approach, the project aims to disseminate the course across the wider ENLIGHT network and make it available to more institutions. Moreover, the project team plans to disseminate the survey results through publication in an international research journal.

Does your project connect to other research, teaching or outreach activities you are involved in?

Yes, the CoCreate project is closely connected to existing teaching development and educational innovation activities within the STEM context. It builds on ongoing efforts to support teachers in integrating transferable skills—such as communication, teamwork, and intercultural competence—into content-driven courses, and aligns with broader institutional priorities related to employability and inclusive teaching practices.

By systematically incorporating student perspectives through surveys, the project strengthens these efforts with evidence-based insights into students’ educational experiences and needs. The development of the MOOC further expands existing teaching and outreach activities by translating these insights into concrete, reusable resources that can be embedded in professional development initiatives for teachers. In addition, the international collaboration within the ENLIGHT network enhances knowledge exchange across institutions and supports the wider dissemination and sustainability of these teaching and research-informed practices.

What's next?

The next steps for the CoCreate project focus on further development, evaluation, and dissemination of the e-learning course within the ENLIGHT network. Following the initial pilot and evaluation with selected ENLIGHT partners, the project team plans to refine the MOOC based on feedback from teachers and educational developers, ensuring that the content remains relevant, flexible, and applicable across diverse STEM teaching contexts.

In the longer term, the collaboration aims to expand participation to additional ENLIGHT institutions and explore opportunities to embed the course within existing professional development programmes for teachers. Beyond the concrete project outcomes, the project group itself will continue to strengthen networks between participating institutions, particularly within the field of STEM education. This includes reinforcing collaboration and shared expertise among the educational developers involved, thereby supporting sustained exchange and future joint initiatives within the ENLIGHT network.

The team at the UG:

• Catherine Meissner (educational developer, coordinator of the Teaching Academy Groningen)
• Dr. Oksana Kavatsyuk
• Drs. Tom Spits
• Iva Beemster
• Drs. Ruben Comadina Granson

We are happy for the CoCreate team and are excited for the outcomes of this project!