Objectives

COALITION aimed to:

• Map and analyse faculty members' needs and competences for incorporating inclusive teaching in higher education.
• Create an active community of practice for academics' development as inclusive educators.
• Develop an educational inclusive pedagogy package of resources, exercises and interactive activities for faculty members, in response to the competences to be built. This package was delivered through an e-book, a faculty guide and a MOOC.
• Create open access diagnostic tools and repository of content facilitating interaction and reflective practices that will guide faculty towards targeted lesson-specific inclusive teaching practices.
• Test in practice, and in local contexts faculty development for inclusive pedagogies, materials pertinent to competence building through action research and alternative processes of professional development (like reflection, peer observations, peer-coaching and awareness-raising activities).
• Reflect on all experience of faculty, faculty developers, and other stakeholders.
• Put forward evidence-based policy recommendations that will enhance capacity building among all higher education stakeholders.

Activities

COALITION activities included:

• Needs analysis: questionnaires, focus groups, interviews.
• i-SCP induction faculty development seminars for faculty participating in peer-observation and peer-coaching activities and faculty taking up action research within an active community of practice.
• Creation of interactive content, resources, prompts for action & reflection for faculty development (eBook) and MOOC with micro-credentials.
• Using content as an incentive for creating more alliances/networking.
• Evaluation of fd processes used for fd developers guide & policy.

And more:

• Various scientific conference presentations on project results.
• Book launches.
• MOOC launch.
• Various discussion sessions and workshops at local universities.
• Organisation of international conference on inclusive higher education.
• Numerous blog posts and news items in project results.

Achievements

Significant outputs and results include:

• Scientific report on results of needs analysis, including the presentation of a framework of faculty competencies for inclusive teaching in higher education.
• A series of open-access seminars.
• A website with all resources.
• An online platform for discussion.
• Various tools for faculty development, such as peer-observation forms, and lesson plan redesign tools.
• Action research tools and guidelines.
• Guidelines for organising communities of practice at higher education institution.
• A book providing scientific background on inclusive teaching in higher education.
• A faculty guide highlighting the use of the developed tools in practice.
• An international conference.
• Presentations at major European educational research conference.

COALITION was a cooperation partnership between Leiden University and six other international institutions and organisations in five European countries:

1. Disigma Publications PC, Greece [website]
2. Daugavpils University, Latvia [website]
3. University of Crete, Greece [website]
4. Stockholm University, Sweden [website]
5. University of Cantabria, Spain [website]
6. University of Bucharest, Romania [website]