L'équipe PUNCh, au service des acteurs d’enseignement, contribue à faire de chaque étudiant un citoyen responsable en le plaçant au cœur des apprentissages et en cultivant le plaisir d’enseigner chez les enseignants. En favorisant des dispositifs d’apprentissage porteurs de sens, PUNCh s’efforce de stimuler la création d’expériences éducatives significatives et de les accompagner. De plus, notre équipe impulse une culture dynamique des outils au service des apprentissages répondant aux besoins des étudiants et des enseignants.

Au travers de PUNCH, l’Université de Namur s’est dotée d’un projet pédagogique formulé en 5 axes. 

Inviting teachers to move from a preoccupation with their course to building a program of study on a collegial definition of the training project.

The program approach quickly emerged as a condition for the harmonious development of pedagogical innovations. The development of new pedagogical devices carried by isolated teachers, however qualitative they may be, seemed insufficient.

Pedagogical innovation also benefits from being developed within a dialogue, steering and collective vision carried by the program-team.

This first axis of PUNCH invites teachers to broaden their pedagogical preoccupations, often focused on "their" course, to become more a part of an overall training program.

This approach supports the idea of basing a course program on a training project that is collegially defined: knowledge and skills to be acquired, specificities of the program, values carried by the program-team. For teachers, this means questioning the objectives and methods of their courses in the light of these program-objectives, but also working more collegially on pedagogical innovations.

"Learning by doing" is undoubtedly the fundamental principle of active methods.

Inverted classrooms, peer instruction, problem-based learning, collaborative learning, discussion-based teaching, project-based learning, role-playing... So many ingredients of this second axis of PUNCH that invite teachers to resort, when the context justifies it, to methods that place students more at the center of their learning. The aim is to move them from a passive situation of receiving information to an active attitude of constructing and/or manipulating learning. If well thought-out and correctly implemented, these methods support student motivation, give meaning to learning, and encourage retention and skills development. They individualize training by diversifying methods and adapting to the pace of each student, notably through the use of videos and digital media. Active methods therefore go hand in hand with the promotion of e-learning systems. What's more, these methods have an impact on teachers' work (satisfaction, pleasure, intellectual interest, collaboration, etc.).

Decompartmentalizing courses, moving away from "drawer" learning, fostering links between subjects.

All objectives falling under a more cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary vision of teaching supported by the University of Namur. Openness to the world aims to break down the walls that too often separate the university from civil society, and to value contact with the outside world as a source of learning (via internships, projects with external sponsors, visiting professionals, various extra-academic activities such as volunteering, visiting museums, attending conferences...). In addition to the acquisition of professional skills, this openness has the virtue of building students' professional identity, developing a richer vision of the world around them, and actively mobilizing learning achievements. Opening up to the world is also the idea, akin to "service learning", of building students' civic identity via socially useful activities that are also sources of learning.

Respect the coherence between objectives, teaching methods implemented and assessment.

Juries sometimes in several languages, deliverables transmitted to external sponsors, continuous and formative assessment, peer assessment, interdisciplinary co-assessment... The PUNCH projects have demonstrated the value of changing assessment methods to capture the impact of new methods on learning, on mastery of high-level skills, on the ability to make connections... It's therefore a question of supporting forms of innovation in assessment that make it possible to value achievements that yesterday were perhaps too implicit. We must therefore be careful to maintain a good alignment between objectives, methods and evaluation.

Sharing teaching practices and making them the subject of research and publications.

The dissemination of PUNCH axes depends largely on "oil stain" effects. It is therefore important to support the sharing of experiences, ideas and practices by perpetuating and amplifying exchange spaces. It is also important to value and recognize innovators in their efforts to provide quality teaching. This sharing must be supported both through internal events (midis pédagogiques, pedagogical days, conferences, etc.) and external events (pedagogical colloquia, etc.). We also need to mobilize the use of communication media such as video. To fuel this dynamic, PUNCH invites teachers to adopt a SOTL (Scholarship Teaching and Learning) perspective, and to make their teaching practices the subject of research and publications; the PUNCH unit is there to support them in this.