On December 8 and 9 2021, TU/e colleagues Dr. Sonia Gómez Puente, Strategic Advisor Innovations in Teaching & Learning, and Dr. Ir. Ludo van Meeuwen, Manager Cluster Teacher Support & Quality Assurance, visited the cold city of Tallinn, Estonia. With minus 15 degrees Celsius outside, the warm, well equipped, hybrid meeting room provided a good environment to talk about all things Teacher Support. They spent two days together with colleagues from TalTech and DTU on site, and members from l’X, TUM and CTU online. They have got to know each other and have exchanged best practices and ideas for collaboration. Main topics of discussion: teacher support, teacher professionalization, ICT/AV services, quality assurance and innovation funds.

Sonia and Ludo were impressed by the experience of some of the partners in innovation, teacher support and IT support. “Especially DTU, TUM and TalTech are very active regarding innovations and using technology in education. It was great to see how TU/e fits right into this alley by offering state-of-the-art services to its teachers,” says Sonia. Although each institution organizes their teacher support function quite differently, Sonia was happy to see that TU/e is doing a great job. Sonia explains: “Not only do we do a great job with regards to innovation in our services, but especially also in communication and dissemination. We have websites with information about all our tools, innovations, methods, and didactics, and we organize regular meetings to discuss all of those. Both within our faculties as well as in our national network of technical universities”.

The partners also discussed options for further collaboration in teacher support. Ludo explains: “we’ve made agreements like opening up our information pages for teachers to our partners and we’ve discovered other areas for collaboration”. Getting together to talk about teacher support showed that there are many opportunities to bundle EuroTeQ partners’ strengths along the entire range of education innovation and support. “If we can find good ways of exchanging knowledge and experiences, this will create win-win situations for all partner institutions,” finishes Ludo.

Because of the success of the event at TalTech in Tallinn, partners have decided on a next visit right away. In May, teacher support colleagues will be welcomed in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, to look inside the Teacher Support Chain at TU/e and to discuss options for further collaboration. TU/e is looking forward to welcome everyone on campus!