But chalk, blackboard, books and audiences are still there. In 50 years, teaching at EPFL has changed a little about form, a lot about substance, not so much about manner. How can we best train the more than 11,000 students who have chosen our campus, capture their attention and equip them with the skills to face the problems of the future? The point with different actors working on this puzzle challenging any algorithm.

“The challenges for training at EPFL are of two types, logistical and pedagogical,’ says Pierre Vandergheynst, Vice-President for Education. Logistically, the School is attracting more and more students. We are happy about it, but the question arises of doing our best as teachers while continuing to welcome excellent students. From the pedagogical point of view, our teaching must reflect the fact that problems become more complex and interdisciplinary. Our students need to be creative, innovative and able to work with people of diverse backgrounds.”

Interdisciplinarity and experimentation

To meet these challenges, EPFL has synchronized major polytechnic courses and lightened the undergraduate curriculum so that students focus on the fundamentals. But it also created the MAKE fund to financially support interdisciplinary student projects, such as EPFLoop, and it has set up new infrastructures via the Discovery Learning Program.

A programme promoting innovative practical work and project-based learning. This by offering teachers and students laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art equipment (Discovery Learning Labs) that facilitate interdisciplinarity, professional support and prototyping spaces for the realization of projects. “Our aim is to offer an open approach, allowing students to learn by experimenting. We are here to facilitate the implementation of good teaching practices”, notes Pascal Vuilliomenet, head of DLL.

What are these good practices? At EPFL, it is essentially the Teaching Support Center (CAPE) and the LEARN centre, which opened last fall, who follow this issue. The first through assessments and teacher coaching, the second by doing translational research in education sciences. “Our mission is to feed ourselves from the real for research and feed the real through research”, notes Francesco Mondada, Academic Director of the LEARN Centre.

Reforms with tools

The LEARN centre aims to make the most of the knowledge acquired at all levels of the Swiss education system. In this capacity, for four days, he trained 350 female teachers from 10 pilot institutions in order to introduce computer science to cycle 1 (4-7 years). ‘People came to the training rather dubious, but they saw that we were proposing a disconnected approach to computer science, which convinced them of the importance of teaching children the basics of computational thinking, notes Jessica Dehler Zufferey, LEARN Centre Operations Director. Young people are immersed in a digital world, but to become an actor, you have to understand it.»

On the EPFL side, the LEARN centre aims above all to support pedagogical innovation, by providing teachers embarking on new projects with the necessary support to develop a scientific approach to their practice. “Our role is to encourage teachers to do research on how they teach, because it is not really known, nor cultivated and supervised. We want to move towards more equipped reforms, working in partnership with the teacher with an innovative project and the Teaching Support Centre for the pedagogical aspect,” explains Francesco Mondada.

Currently, the LEARN centre is looking at the benefits for students of linear algebra course in inverted class set up by Simone Deparis in September 2017. This is to see if this format is really beneficial to students and to popularize it if necessary. Because any reform is not good to take, innovations not always leading to the desired result. “For six years, many people have been wondering about MOOCs and whether it is a good way to teach on a large scale,” Vandergheynst explains. We see that there is a very high failure rate in these courses, because people do not follow them to the end. At EPFL, they are therefore used more as a modern version of the book. This shows that we must always ask ourselves different ways of doing things to discern the best practice and not be afraid to answer that it is the one in force.”

Encourage transversal skills

Then comes the question of the teacher, the best practices being nothing without pedagogy. “A good teacher adapts to the class and the type of teaching. He questions his teaching and never stops developing his course”, says Nicolò Ferrari, President of the Section Student Representatives Commission and Coordinator of theAGEPolytique. This second-year Bachelor in Physics student is delighted that since the fall of 2018 the EPFL New Faculty Nomination Commission has included a student. On the other hand, he would like to see teachers assessments become more important. “We notice that a great emphasis is placed on pedagogy in the first year, after that tends to crumble. On the other hand, when evaluations are repeatedly negative, concrete actions should be put in place. We see in some cases that people are only moved to another section, and the problem persists.”

The Teaching Support Centre is working to review teachers’ assessments so that they are more detailed and allow them to have more feedback on their practice. “What makes a good teacher? Today, EPFL does not propose criteria, so based on the existing scientific literature, we are establishing some. This is in order to guide teachers towards best practices to improve their teaching, such as peer exchange or research on their practices as promoted by the LEARN centre”, explains Roland Tormey, CAPE coordinator.

In parallel, the centre is working on how teachers can assess students. “In partnership with the members of Eurotech and the Tallinn University of Technology, we are developing tools to assess transversal skills”, says Roland Tormey. Because creativity, social skills, the ability to confront open problems while working as a team will become increasingly important for our students. And to encourage them, you have to change the way you evaluate, focus on the process instead of the outcome.”

Breaking the barrier of time

Still the thorny problem of time. For teachers, as for students, it is not always easy to find a place to develop these transversal skills and learn by putting their hands in the dough. “I need a space in the curriculum where students work on open topics with a lot of coaching. This space must be flexible, modular and able to accommodate projects of different shapes. To do this, we need to rethink the study plans for the end of the Bachelor”, explains Pierre Vandergheynst.

The Vice President for Education would like to go even further and «jump the ladder of time spent at university». Either create the framework conditions so that people who have studied at EPFL can come back all their lives to update their knowledge. “The university has to learn the fundamentals, because these foundations will be useful to students all their lives, but with new technologies, the specificities related to a field are very quickly redefined. That is why we need an amendable diploma throughout life. In my view, this is the challenge facing the university education system in the next 20 years worldwide. And we can play a pioneering role.”

The launch of the Certificate of Open Studies (COS) is already a first step in this direction. This new type of diploma, issued by EPFL for the first time in 2018 and unique in Switzerland, certifies continuing education programs accessible to people without an academic title. “Our strength lies in our lack of history and traditions. We have an innovative spirit that must be preserved, we constantly question ourselves, we do not hesitate to embark on new adventures. We are a young school and we have a role to play because solutions always come from young people”, concludes Pierre Vandergheynst. At 50, EPFL has sharpened its international reputation, gained weight, but not bad tricks. His spirit retains the ardor of youth, always ready to push the boundaries of the impossible.