Bettina Pfaendner
Director in Higher Education, orchestrating the Future of Learning, Strategic and Digital Projects Coordinator, Academic Director Curriculum Accelerator, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia
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As educational visionary and digital strategist Bettina designs curricula in Higher Education in Australia. Engagements at Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Melbourne and Macquarie University in Sydney were steppingstones in Bettina's career over the last 10 years. Combing her Executive TV Producer knowledge with the experience as educator in the Higher Education landscape Bettina also founded the Digital Dolphins, teaching digital storytelling for emerging leaders online with the digitaldolphins.com.au .Her research area is how to overcome #Technophabia in Academia, supporting lifelong learning for academics.
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Imagine Peace on Earth! Pedagogy of Peace empowers Global Citizens.
In this session, participants will re-imagine education as a force for empathy and sustainability. Through engaging discussions, collaborative activities, and best-practice examples, this session demonstrates how Pedagogies of Peace and Climate Action Pedagogy can empower educators to address two critical global challenges: societal polarisation and the climate crisis.
• Pedagogies of Peace: Participants will explore strategies to create compassionate, relationship-centered academic settings that promote restorative practices, global citizenship, and empathy through storytelling and inclusive dialogue. By fostering understanding and collaboration, this approach builds a foundation for peaceful coexistence.
• Climate Action Pedagogy: Educators will learn to integrate climate literacy into curricula through interdisciplinary projects, advocacy initiatives, and hands-on learning experiences. This pedagogy inspires students to become proactive agents of environmental sustainability. This training will draw inspiration from a highly successful Global Citizenship online course, where students:
• Explore global interconnectedness through the lens of social, economic, and environmental issues.
• Develop cultural intelligence and cross-cultural communication skills to collaborate on global solutions.
• Engage with the Sustainable Development Goals
This best practice encourages students to articulate their role as global citizens in culturally diverse contexts.
By imagining a future of peaceful coexistence and a sustainable planet, this training session invites educators to embrace their role in empowering globally aware, socially responsible, and action-oriented students. Participants will leave with actionable strategies, innovative ideas, and a cheat sheet to implement these pedagogies in their teaching.
This session exemplifies the University Future Festival's transformative spirit, where imagination and innovation fuel the creation of impactful educational practices.
Tales from Tomorrow - The adventures of robot girl Ada & her dog Turing
In the ever-evolving landscape of higher education, where the quest for cultivating 21st-century skills is paramount, storytelling emerges not just as an art but as a strategic pedagogical tool. With her input session "Tales from Tomorrow" - Bettina guides us beyond the Storybook, navigating the Labyrinth of Tomorrow's Skills, and takes us on a captivating journey into the heart of innovative teaching, where narratives become the bridge between knowledge and imagination, fostering creativity, structured and critical thinking among learners. Envision a dynamic dialogue between an inquisitive robot girl, Ada, and her wise dog companion, Turing, as they navigate the realms of learning through stories. Ada, with her insatiable curiosity about the world and her place in the future workforce, and Turing, with his sage-like wisdom, encapsulate the essence of our exploration into how storytelling can revolutionise education. As Ada and Turing delve into tales of scientific discovery, historical events, and futuristic scenarios, they illuminate how storytelling: Engages students more deeply by making abstract concepts tangible and relatable, Encourages critical thinking by presenting complex problems within stories, prompting students to propose and debate solutions, Enhances creativity by inviting students to imagine alternate endings, explore diverse perspectives, and create their narratives, Cultivates empathy and emotional intelligence by exposing students to different cultures, experiences, and emotional journeys through characters and plots, Promotes structured thinking by analysing the components of a story, such as plot, character development, and thematic elements, which parallels the structuring of research and argumentation in academic work. Discover how we can all contribute to a future where teaching and learning are enriched with the magic of stories, paving the way for a new generation of thinkers, creators, and innovators.
The Digital Story Recipe
Learn how you can design a digital story with impact in a few simple steps.
Ingredients for your shopping list:
500 words
1L adjectives
2L active verbs
10 names
7 settings
15 props
digital tool
Mix the 500 words with 1L adjectives with the 2L active verbs, put aside for 2 hours
Take the 10 names and put them in the 7 settings, let them settle in for 2 hours, rearrange to characters
Ad 15 props, let simmer for 3 hours, allocate to characters and into settings
Pick a tool.
Mix!
Tell!
In this interactive and playful workshop, the participants will learn how to best connect with your audience, how to start a story, and where to end, and which digital tool is the most effective for you to make the impact you want
Following David Kolb's experiential learning cycle and Scott G. Eberle's concept of learning through play we will give impulses to create digital stories together in a safe space.
The workshop material will be downloadable as a workbook to repeat this workshop by the participants in any other settings.
The Future of Learning Week - a recipe to capture the trend
The Future of learning week - a different kind of conference, a recipe to capture the trend.
FoL week 2022 – The Future of Learning is here! https://folweek2022.com/
at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
Last year the Learning Transformation Unit at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, tasked me with the creation and production of the Future of Learning (FoL) week 2022, the yearly internal showcase of best practice in Learning and Teaching at Swinburne.
We deliberately did not call it “conference” to keep it a small event, only to end up with 13 sessions and 36 speakers across five days.
Equipped with the task to foster provocation I embarked on this journey with a timeline of not more than 10 weeks to go.
How to navigate this task to create an inspiring and thought provocative FoL week hybrid event as a “one woman show” and how to steer the ship successfully into the harbor is the topic of this workshop.
With hands on activities Bettina guides you through the process of creating a successful FoL week.
You will get:
A step-by-step process map to create a FoL week
Three biggest learnings
Mistakes to avoid
The impact you can make
Playbook to download
Join me in this session to celebrate and accelerate the Future of Learning in Higher Education!
95 Thesen reloaded - mit ChatGPT einen Aktionsplan schreiben
2025 steht vor der Tür! Das Zukunftspapier 2025, ein auf der HFDCon von der Community in 2022 erarbeitetes Papier, ist nach wie vor ein zahnloser Tiger.
Wir waren in dem Sprint-Prozess beteiligt und haben im Diskussionspapier 15 Forderungen für eine zukunftsfähige Kultur an Hochschulen mit-formuliert.
Was fehlt? Die konkreten Maßnahmen, um die Kulturen der Verantwortung, der ganzheitlichen Organisation, der Beziehung, der Kooperation, des mit- und voneinander Lernens, der Innovation und der politischen Verantwortung zu entwerfen und in die Umsetzung zu führen.
Wir plädieren für eine transparente Diskussion mit dem Ziel, einen konkreten Aktionsplan zu entwickeln. Denn: es bewegt sich noch viel zu wenig an den Hochschulen. Strategieentwicklung läuft nur schleppend oder gar nicht. Engagierte empfinden sich oft als machtlos. Wir wollen der Frustration ein motivierendes Instrument entgegensetzen, das alle auf jeder Ebene direkt ins Handeln bringen kann.
Unter Zuhilfenahme des KI-Textgenerators ChatGPT wollen wir Umsetzungspläne erarbeiten: Wer sind die Verantwortlichen? Wer die Macher*innen? Wer bildet Taskforces? Zeitplan? Budget?
Mit dem resultierenden Aktionsplan soll jede*r in die Lage versetzt werden, konkret und direkt in Aktion treten zu können. Im Workshop entsteht ein interaktiver und digitaler Kompass, der den HFD-Showroom (https://showroom.hfd.digital/) ergänzt und in ähnlichem Format, Change auf verschiedenen Ebenen und durch unterschiedliche Akteure beschreibt.
Die Möglichkeiten der KI nutzen wir dabei nur als Werkzeug - im Vordergrund steht die Erarbeitung von Aktionen zur Organisationsentwicklung! Der Workshop soll Auftakt sein für neue Aktionen einer engagierten Community. Deshalb verortet er sich im Track Strategie und Management.
Der Workshop wird von Wibke Matthes (Kiel), Bettina Pfändner (Berlin/Melbourne), Sanne Ziethen (Hildesheim) und Kevin Saukel (Frankfurt) durchgeführt.
Die Lektüre des Zukunftspapiers wird empfohlen. (https://s.gwdg.de/RD6DSj)
The University landscape down under - Australia's HE re-invented
With the ongoing border-closure to international students the courtship of domestic students is highly competitive in the current University landscape in Australia. Not only was the University sector bound to re-think it's approach to learning and teaching, with a glimpse into the abyss we also had to re-invent our vision, goals and our actions. With accelerating part of the University's sleeping beauties Swinburne University of Technology (SUT) developed a bold plan I'd like to share with the audience.
We took a multifold approach and re-invited ourselves on multiple levels, but for this occasion I’d like to only highlight three major fields
1. LEAP: Learning Experience Accelerator Program. The framework focusses on a parallel acceleration of acquiring new skills for both Academics and students, modelling to embrace the unknown with the ability to admit failure, showing vulnerability and inviting students to take risks. Examples: Adobe Creative Campus workshops, Vice Chancellor’s awards for Learning &Teaching, Learning and Teaching seminars and lecture series, and Adobe Innovation Grants. A "Blended Learning Calculator" provides a quick reference to assess the Blend level of a unit, based on Swinburne’s Blended Learning Strategy.
2. WIL: Work integrated Learning means to successfully pathway our students into industry. Every undergraduate student will receive work integrated learning and real industry experience during their degree. Learning by doing, Mastery through practice is our pedagogy of choice. (Example Salesforce)
3. Swinburne: next gen_now: new branding, new slogan, connecting the future with the present
Swinburne University of Technology – living up to its name:
as a dual-sector university of technology, born of a technical college, Swinburne has technology in its DNA.
“Pedagogy before technology” is the driver and–“People and technology working together to build a better world” our vision.
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