An inspirational guide to foster soft and digital skills development and internationalisation in higher education through MOOCs, serious games and online learning communities

Published: October 2020

Licence: CC BY 4.0

The first output of INSYSTED is an instructional booklet: an inspirational guide to re-designing university courses and lessons with practical advice on how to foster soft and digital skills and internationalisation in higher education.

The booklet is primarily for university teachers, but also for non-academic staff supporting them and for anybody interested in education processes.

The instructional booklet was designed and developed by Politecnico di Milano – METID Learning Innovation.

What do I find in the booklet?

Whether you are about to start or you already have experience in teaching innovation, you will find info cards with both basic and advanced tips and a focus on industrial and management engineering education with targeted, hands-on examples. 

Two distinctive features of the booklet are: low-hanging fruit ideas which describe tips that are relatively easy to implement; supporting research and additional resources which explore topics more in depth.

The booklet takes a bite-sized approach, so that diverse reading options are available according to your needs: you may cherry-pick the content most beneficial to you, or you may peruse content following the suggested path.

Download the booklet here

Available files:

• instructional booklet (pdf version) – recommended for printout and for reading on digital devices

• instructional booklet (plain text version) – if you want to reuse or adapt the content of the booklet, you can use this plain text version as long as you cite the original publication

• leaflet about the instructional booklet

Executive summary

The booklet on the INSYSTED pedagogical framework provides practical advice on how to foster soft and digital skills and internationalisation in higher education by using MOOCs, serious games and online learning communities in a blended learning setting.

The overarching purpose is to increase students’ preparedness for the challenges of a rapidly evolving labour market by promoting instructional approaches where they are active participants in their learning process, rather than passive recipients (student-centred approaches).

This booklet is for university teachers, especially from industrial and management engineering faculties, but also non-academic staff within operational units in higher education institutions and anybody interested in education processes.

The booklet can be used to support both the (re)design of lessons and courses and the training of pre-service and in-service teachers.

This publication takes a bite-sized approach with in-depth info cards to meet the needs of an audience with various levels of experience in teaching innovation; although it is targeted towards industrial and management engineering education, it is meant to be transferable to any other university context. 

To achieve these aims, the handbook is organised as follows:

The first part (Teaching innovation & blended learning) outlines the value proposition of the INSYSTED approach and the pillars that support it: MOOCs, serious games and online learning communities.

The second part (Intended Learning Outcomes – ILOs) covers the purposes for which learning outcomes are used and discusses aspects related to the definition and use of ILOs.

The third part (Assessment tasks) sets out the basic steps to be taken into account when designing assessment tasks and provides examples.

The fourth part (Teaching and Learning Activities – TLAs) describes how teaching and learning activities can be redesigned; uses examples to illustrate how the pillars (MOOCs, serious games and online learning communities) can be integrated into practice.

The booklet concludes with an exploration of the specific value added by each pillar.

Each part of the booklet provides an overview of, and a direct link to, supporting research in the topics covered.