This year’s General Meeting, held at the University of Bern, once again featured an indispensable delegation of students from the ENLIGHT Student Network (SN), representing all the universities in the alliance. It was remarkable to see that nearly every work package had student representatives actively participating in their respective workshops. The Student Network views this as an incredible opportunity to address various challenges from a student perspective.

What made this meeting in Bern truly special? The ENLIGHT SN Day, where we dedicated an entire day to brainstorming and advancing the Student Network’s initiatives. The day began with two focused sessions: Community and Governance.

In the Community session, discussions revolved around strategies to increase ENLIGHT’s visibility in the institutions, adopt sustainable practices regarding merchandise, and prepare for the upcoming Student Conference in Göttingen. Meanwhile, the Governance team managed both to understand what wasn't working for them and also setting goals for the future; such as the planning of a policy paper focused on knowledge and visibility of the SN within at Alliance level, local level and also internal level or the mapping of the WP tasks that team wants to be active in.

Following the morning sessions, the ENLIGHT SN General Session took place. During this session, we tackled key issues such as improving the Student Network’s internal and external processes, enhancing its “outreach strategy”, and working together to make the ENLIGHT alliance truly unique.

The day concluded in a relaxed atmosphere over fondue, providing a perfect ending to an intensive and productive day. The ENLIGHT SN Day proved to be a fantastic opportunity to refine the functioning of the Student Network, with the added benefit of full representation from all member universities.

What more can we say? It was an amazing three days of hard work and collaboration, leading to decisions and plans that will, we hope, propel the alliance forward.

Challenge-based education (CBE) is a core element of teaching and learning initiatives within ENLIGHT. The focus of CBE is on incorporating real-life cases into the teaching of university courses and working on students' 21st century skills. This is a call for participants in the next edition of the CBE training sessions for educators.

This online training opportunity is targeted towards educators or educational designers who would like to gain deeper insights into theory and practice of CBE. The training team will go over relevant frameworks, examples of previous courses and practice applying these principles with colleagues from the ENLIGHT university network. 

 Am I ready for CBE?

You are ready if you are:

• Committed to student-centred education
• Willing to give up control of the learning process and to trust students to develop their own knowledge with your facilitation
• Experienced in facilitating group and/or team work
• Willing to guide and mentor students

These sessions will be held online with the additional possibility to network, exchange ideas and questions with colleagues from other ENLIGHT universities.

The training has 3 components:

• An asynchronous online path that opens on 21 February 2025. The path requires approximately half a day with the objective of participants gaining familiarity with the concept.
• ZOOM session 1 on 5 March 10:00-12:30 CET – In this session, participants will meet colleagues from the online path in a ZOOM session, reflect on existing knowhow on CBE and design a challenge-based module.
• ZOOM session 2 on 6 March 10:00-12:30 CET –Participants will work in small groups and choose the appropriate teaching tools and techniques to guide and coach students throughout a CBE Module

Please send an expression of interest to the ENLIGHT coordinator at your university before 14 February 2025.

Mervin Bakker, former Director of Internationalisation at the University of Groningen, reflects on his impactful role in shaping ENLIGHT. This alliance of ten European universities has redefined collaboration in higher education, fostering inclusivity and accessibility. In a recent interview, Bakker shared insights into ENLIGHT’s vision, achievements, and its path toward a sustainable future.

Read the full interview here.

Eight weeks ago, 24 students from five of ENLIGHT’s partner universities, embarked on a journey. The first six weeks were spent interacting online, with participants getting to know each other—starting from the basics of everyone's studies, to addressing hard questions such as defining the most pressing issues of our time. Throughout this process, the students formed genuine bonds as they researched and discovered information about the world through a myriad of lenses.

This experience culminated in an on-site week in Bratislava where students solidified their online friendships face-to-face and worked on techniques to make their voices heard. The final course project, the symposium “ENLIGHT Intellect: The NextGen Symposium on Critical Thinking in Tackling Global Issues" required each student to give a talk showcasing a novel idea stemming from their group’s research. The talks were impressive, and the forum for a comfortable and honest exchange of ideas was possible due to the atmosphere of familiarity that had been built starting with the first online meeting.

Throughout the entire process, students underwent critical thinking—revising their views, analyzing and synthesizing information, applying reasoning, and more. In the end, both the students and the educators walked away empowered, having expanded their own lenses about the discussed topics and honed their skills on how to broadcast their ideas effectively to the world.

Blended Intensive Course Fostering Critical Thinking Skills 2024 was hosted by Comenius University and involved lecturers from University of Göttingen, Université de Bordeaux and Comenius University.