by Ana Teresa Martins Ferreira de Oliveira
Abstract: The Polytechnic University of Viana do Castelo in Portugal is using the connections created through HEInnovate to forge international networks and bring Europe to the rural region where the university is located.
What is your role, and what is the context of your institution?
I, Dr. Ana Teresa Martins Ferreira de Oliveira, am a Pro President at the Polytechnic University of Viana do Castelo, located in a rural area in the north of Portugal. The university has six schools, around 6,000 students, and 650 staff members. It has a mission to enhance the rural region development where the university is located, including working closely with local stakeholders, municipalities, and businesses.
How are you using HEInnovate in your role, and how did you discover it?
I am responsible for the teaching and learning at the university and am working to integrate HEInnovate into this. My goal is to further the strategic development of aspects of teaching related to entrepreneurship and innovation and to change the way the university teaches and learns. I became aware of HEInnovate around six years ago when Bárbara Coelho Gabriel, a professor at another university in Portugal (University of Aveiro) and a former member of the HEInnovate Expert Group, shared her experience implementing HEInnovate in her mechanical engineering class.
How has your institution used HEInnovate to strengthen its teaching practices and community engagement?
The Polytechnic University of Viana do Castelo was a member of the Beyond Scale project, co-funded by the European Union Erasmus+ programme and works toward a community of practice of higher education institutions and policy makers to strengthen the organisational capacity of higher education institutions to play a stronger role in their surrounding economies. The University developed a community of practice of teachers to help them learn how to use HEInnovate to assess their own courses and explore innovative approaches to teaching and learning. They also held face-to-face meetings with social innovation companies using HEInnovate. The decision was to involve these social innovation companies as the university integrated projects in their curricula that use social innovation to address these companies’ problems. Through curricula, teachers and their courses solve real-world problems through project-based learning, and the HEInnovate tool helps teachers assess these curricula.
How widespread was the use of HEInnovate in your institution through this initiative?
Through this project, 28 teachers and 63 organisations developed a solid understanding of the HEInnovate self-assessment. After the COVID-19 pandemic, the project ended, but the University kept the connections with businesses and social organisations and is exploring innovative approaches to teaching and learning.
Have you taken part in any HEInnovate training? What were the key takeaways?
Though I had long been familiar with HEInnovate, I attended the Train the Trainers workshop in Brussels in May of 2024 to educate myself about the changes that had been made to the HEInnovate website over the years, such as the introduction of the action cards. I found the training useful, particularly due to its face-to-face nature. I felt that examining how HEInnovate could be improved and how the new features could be used was particularly interesting.
Have you maintained any collaborations or exchanges with other participants from the Train the Trainers workshop?
I have kept in contact with my fellow participants from one of the breakout groups at Train the Trainers, a group of about ten people. We held two meetings since the training. I have shared with this group an entrepreneurship project that I am implementing at the University, which involves students from across the University working with teachers across the six schools, familiarising themselves with various and diverse scientific approaches. My fellow group members expressed a desire to implement a similar activity at their own institutions.
Have any new international initiatives been developed as a result of your HEInnovate experience?
The group is now developing an international co-teaching project, based on HEInnovate’s emphasis on the importance of internationalisation in higher education. In December, the University will have an immersive week, during which they will offer to students who are integrated in entrepreneurship projects based on innovation the opportunity to go tackle real-world problems from one municipality in their territory using an innovation approach. During the immersive week, I also hope that the partners from different institutions internationally can talk to students remotely about entrepreneurship at their universities and put them in contact with universities abroad.
What impact has this work had on your students and the local community?
The Polytechnic University of Viana do Castelo is a small university in a rather isolated, rural area in Portugal—students are unable to easily take trips to other countries in Europe and don’t feel connected to the rest of Europe. Therefore, I hope that this co-teaching network can be expanded to include other international partners in the future, to “bring Europe” to students and local stakeholders in the University’s community and region.