Reflections on TeLEd 2025: A Year of Insight, Innovation, and Inspiration

17 December 2025

Throughout 2025, the University of Bergen’s TeLEd Monthly Event Series offered a dynamic international forum for exploring how higher education is being reshaped pedagogically, technologically, and ethically.

Across sessions spanning AI, creativity, compassion, instructional design, and teacher development, a common thread emerged: how to create meaningful, humane, and future-ready learning experiences amid rapid change. Recordings of all sessions are now available for educators in the CHARM-EU partner universities.

The year began in January with Dr. Ingrid Noguera (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain), who examined flexible education and AI-supported personalised learning through socioconstructivist lenses.

In February, Rikke Toft Nørgård (Aarhus University, Denmark) invited participants into the world of playful pedagogy, highlighting the role of creativity in designing transformative learning environments.

In March, Cengiz Hakan Aydin (Özyeğin University, Turkey) mapped the evolving landscape of instructional modalities in an era defined by AI and emerging technologies.

April followed with Maha Bali (American University in Cairo, Egypt) sharing her talk, “Compassionate Learning Design in the Age of AI,” in which she introduced a model grounded in participation, justice, and care, culminating in a critical compassionate learning design praxis.

The May event featured Leila Ferguson (University of Oslo, Norway), who explored the complexities of teacher beliefs and their influence on practice and professional development.

In June, Professor Michelle Eady (University of Wollongong, Australia) focused on preparing “world-ready” graduates, emphasising the interplay between disciplinary mastery, work-integrated learning, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

After the summer break, August brought an engaging session led by Rob Gray (UiB, Norway) and Laura Cruz (Penn State, USA). Introducing the writerly framework for meaningful learning, they demonstrated how students can become co-creators of meaning through dialogic, interpretive engagement with content, peers, and instructors.

In September, renowned active-learning researcher Louis Deslauriers (Harvard University, USA) returned to Bergen—this time virtually—to discuss the ideal tutor model and the promise and limits of AI in supporting motivation and learning.

October continued the AI theme with Matthew Russell (University of Texas at Austin, USA), who offered thoughtful reflections on integrating AI into higher education in ethical, critical, and conceptually robust ways.

The year concluded in November with André Mestre (SLATE, UiB, Norway), who explored how generative AI is reshaping creativity and teaching in design education, challenging assumptions about authorship, creative process, and assessment. He also introduced the idea of mediation anxiety, highlighting how AI makes the shared, tool-mediated nature of creativity more visible.

With recordings of every session now available, the 2025 TeLEd series remains a valuable resource for all who are invested in the future of university teaching and learning.