Pedagogy cannot remain static. It must be critical, creative, and strategically directed.
In Coimbra, on a May morning, more than 150 people who work inside the machinery of higher education paused to ask what that machinery is actually for. The arrival of generative AI has made an old question newly urgent: if machines can now perform many of the cognitive tasks we once asked of students, what remains at the heart of teaching and learning? The gathering at the Polytechnic Institute was not a celebration of technology nor a resistance to it, but something rarer — a collective act of deliberate reckoning with what education must protect as it transforms.
- Generative AI is arriving in classrooms faster than institutions have developed the frameworks to receive it, forcing educators to improvise where they once had stable ground.
- Over fifty presentations revealed a field in active experimentation — no consensus exists, only a widening map of attempts, failures, and partial successes.
- The risk of leaving students behind in uneven digital transitions surfaced repeatedly, making inclusion not a side concern but a central pressure point.
- Faculty themselves face an unresolved tension: doing the hard work of pedagogical reinvention while that work remains largely invisible in career recognition structures.
- The conference landed not on answers but on a shared orientation — that technology must serve intentional educational values, not the other way around.
On May 22nd, the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra opened its doors to a question that universities across Europe can no longer defer: what becomes of teaching when artificial intelligence can write, reason, and generate ideas at speeds that outpace most students? More than 150 educators, researchers, and administrators gathered under the banner of the INOV3P Project for a day titled "Reflections on Pedagogy in Higher Education: Perspectives, Practices, and Recognition."
Two keynote speakers anchored the intellectual stakes. António Dias Figueiredo asked what pedagogy means in an age of algorithms; Arnold Pears, from Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, pressed further into what learning itself signifies once generative AI enters the room. These were not abstract provocations — they were invitations to examine assumptions that higher education has long taken for granted.
The afternoon spread across more than fifty presentations in which educators shared not theories but lived practices: how to deploy AI responsibly, how to design digital strategies that don't abandon vulnerable students, how to sustain genuine engagement, and how to equip faculty for a landscape that keeps shifting beneath them. The sheer variety of approaches made clear that no single solution is emerging — institutions are comparing notes, not copying blueprints.
Sofia Silva, vice president of the Institute and chair of the organizing committee, gave the day its sharpest framing. Pedagogy, she argued, cannot remain static or be treated as peripheral — it must become critical, creative, empowering, and above all strategic, meaning shaped by educational values rather than by the logic of the tools themselves. She also named what the gathering had quietly achieved: a space for reflection that was neither triumphalist about technology nor paralyzed by it, but honestly oriented toward inclusion, faculty recognition, and the kind of learning environments that actually develop human judgment.
What the day produced was not a roadmap but a posture — that as powerful new tools reshape the university, the people inside it will navigate that change with their purposes clearly in view.
On the morning of May 22nd, more than 150 educators, researchers, and administrators gathered in Coimbra for a conversation that has become unavoidable in universities across Europe: what happens to teaching when the machines can write, reason, and generate ideas faster than most students can think them through?
The Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra hosted the inaugural gathering titled "Reflections on Pedagogy in Higher Education: Perspectives, Practices, and Recognition." Held at the Institute of Accounting and Administration, the event was anchored in the INOV3P Project, a research initiative designed to push institutions to think seriously about how digital transformation and artificial intelligence are reshaping the fundamentals of how people learn.
Two keynote speakers set the intellectual tone. António Dias Figueiredo, from the University of Coimbra's Faculty of Science and Technology, posed a question that hung over the entire day: "Pedagogy in Higher Education: What Reflections in the Age of Algorithms?" Arnold Pears, from Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology, took the question further, asking what learning itself means when generative AI enters the classroom. These were not rhetorical flourishes. They were invitations to rethink foundational assumptions.
The afternoon unfolded across more than fifty separate presentations. Educators shared what they were actually doing—not in theory, but in practice. The conversations centered on how to use generative AI responsibly, how to build digital strategies that don't leave students behind, how to keep students genuinely engaged, and how to support teachers in developing new skills for a transformed landscape. The breadth of the program suggested that no single answer exists; instead, institutions are experimenting, learning, and comparing notes.
Sofia Silva, vice president of the Polytechnic Institute and chair of the organizing committee, offered a reflection that captured the stakes. She emphasized that pedagogical innovation cannot be treated as optional or peripheral to higher education's mission. "In a time when digital transformation and generative artificial intelligence challenge us to reshape how we teach and learn," she said, "it becomes clear that pedagogy cannot remain static. It must be critical, creative, empowering, and strategically directed." The word "strategically" matters here—this is not about adopting technology for its own sake, but about intentional choices aligned with educational values.
Silva also highlighted what the gathering had managed to accomplish: a space for "unconformist but optimistic" reflection. The participants had not gathered to celebrate technology or to resist it, but to think carefully about inclusion, about recognizing and valuing the pedagogical work that faculty do, about designing learning environments that actually stimulate thought, and about learning from one another across institutions. These are the unglamorous, essential questions that determine whether higher education remains a place where students develop judgment and capability, or becomes something narrower.
What emerges from a day like this is not a blueprint but a commitment: that as universities navigate the arrival of powerful new tools, they will do so with their eyes open, grounded in what pedagogy is actually for.
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Pedagogy cannot remain static in the age of digital transformation and generative AI—it must be critical, creative, empowering, and strategically directed.— Sofia Silva, vice president of Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra
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Why does a gathering like this matter now, specifically? Universities have always adapted to new technologies.
Because the pace and the scope are different. Generative AI isn't a tool that sits alongside teaching—it can do things that look like teaching. That forces a reckoning about what teaching actually is, what we value in it, and whether we're just optimizing for efficiency or protecting something deeper.
What's the risk if institutions don't think this through carefully?
That they adopt the technology without asking hard questions about inclusion, about whether it widens or narrows opportunity, about whether it deskills teachers or empowers them. You can have AI in every classroom and still fail students if you haven't thought through the pedagogy.
The vice president used the word "strategically." What does that mean in practice?
It means asking: What do we want students to be able to do that they can't do now? Where does AI help with that, and where does it get in the way? It's not about being anti-technology. It's about being clear-eyed about what you're trying to accomplish.
Were there disagreements in the room, or was this mostly consensus-building?
Fifty presentations across a single day suggests real diversity of approach. Some institutions are moving fast, others more cautiously. The value of gathering wasn't agreement—it was permission to think out loud and learn from what others are trying.