Fourth call for projects PUNCH - 2024

Five projects were selected in May 2024, and will be launched in September 2024:

  • Act'UNamur, led by Anne-Sophie Collard
  • Le Droigibus : clinique itinérante des droits de l'enfant et des familles, led by Géraldine Mathieu
  • Ludifier pour mieux assimiler, led by Sarah Larielle
  • GenAI4Students: AI générative personnalisée pour l'enseignement, led by Michaël Lobet
  • Escape Game Interprofessionnel, led by Hélène Givron

These five projects will benefit from funding to hire a 0.2 FTE for two years and for teaching materials.

As a reminder, this fourth call for projects focused on innovation through the Sustainable Development, the Service Learning, and the Development and Identity axis of the Plan Universe 2025.

Third call for PUNCH projects - 2019

Twelve projects were launched in September 2019:

  • CLC ... Construisons dans un monde qui bouge - Benoît Muylkens
  • CodEmplify - Benoit Frenay
  • Construction of a pedagogical device to stimulate reflective practices and in particular students' self-knowledge - Mélanie Latiers
  • Constructing collective effectiveness - Julie Hermans
  • Creating educational video capsules by students for students - Benoît Michaux
  • CyberneTIC - Marc Romainville
  • Gestural interaction - from concepts to longitudinal application - Bruno Dumas

If your house were smart, what gesture would you make to raise the volume in your living room? A gesture is not just a movement, it also carries meaning in the user's context.

As part of the PUNCH project "Gestural interaction - from concepts to longitudinal implementation", computer science students are asked to study the gestures spontaneously performed by potential users to achieve a defined task, and to implement the most natural/representative gesture in augmented reality. In particular, the project requires them to present interaction cases to several dozen users, asking them to imagine which gesture would be the most suitable for each.

This project is integrated into the "advanced interaction methods" course, enabling students to use the theoretical concepts and best practices presented in the course. Beyond the simple use of various gesture recognition technologies (3D trackpads, wristbands with accelerometers, gesture recognition cameras), students are encouraged to integrate ergonomic and usability issues into their thinking, which must guide any interactive system design. Integrating the user at the center of the creation of a technical system is thus encouraged, while exploring design techniques seen in other courses of their training.

  • Regulating technological innovations through a digital learning path - Elise Degrave
  • The European language portfolio: a tool for developing students' sense of competence - François-Xavier Fievez
  • MyGrammar - Johan Vanparys

When revising English grammar, what student hasn't wished to be directed straight to the points they didn't quite master, and avoid reviewing those they didn't? This is the ambition of the "My Grammar" project run by the École des Langues Vivantes.

In order to help Block 1 students confirm/achieve CEFR level B1 in English grammar, the École des Langues Vivantes is planning to create a remediation area on WebCampus to be offered as a flipped classroom. The aim is for two forms of teaching - face-to-face and distance learning - to mutually enrich each other, in a dynamic of pedagogical differentiation.

The resolutely innovative dimension of the "My Grammar" project lies in the creation of personalized pathways in the remediation space, starting from a diagnosis of the student's weaknesses and evolving on an adaptive basis. Students are accompanied by the system on several levels: (1) the identification of their weaknesses, (2) the way to remedy them by proposing theoretical tools that are also differentiated, and (3) the final validation that the skill has indeed been acquired.

  • Reinforcing cross-disciplinary skills in law students - Hervé Jacquemin
  • Seeing for better understanding in physics - Robert Sporken

Second call for PUNCH projects - 2017

  • Interdisciplinary learning of cardiopulmonary resuscitation by "almost peers"

Reversing roles and learning with and through the skills of future colleagues of interdisciplinarity in healthcare. Discover the project.

  • Synergistic use of the Cytomine platform for hands-on histology learning

Learn histology (inter)actively and more autonomously, at each student's own pace. Discover the project.

  • Make things happen!

Autonomy, student processing of information, task-based learning, empowerment and choice... What if we tried the pedagogy of "interactive constructivism"? Discover the project.

  • Using games to develop skills linked to accompanying change

Knowing about change is good, living it is better! Learn more or discover the project in video.

  • Towards an integrated teaching unit in BLOC 3 based on experimental economics

I'm in charge of a subject (game theory) that you can practice by playing, why deprive yourself? Discover the project.

  • Personalized courses and continuous assessment in programming

Objective: exam success continuous and sustainable learning. Discover the project.

  • micro: PUNCH

Many students find programming difficult. To better meet their needs, let's multiply and diversify learning aids (metaphors, visualization, IDEs, tangible tools, etc.)! Discover the project.

  • Law and societal issues

Law is everywhere, let's unearth it in books, films and newspapers! Discover the project.

  • Focus on computer skills in geography

Let's better target computer learning so that these tools become a valuable aid for all geographers. Discover the project.

  • Active methods for the teaching of Shifted Hour Law (MAD-HD)

Shifted hours, shifted pedagogy? An example of flipped classroom implementation for students in evening classes. Discover the project.

  • The skills tree

I'm teaching, but what are they learning? To find out, let's assess their skills throughout the course... Discovering the project.

  • The interdisciplinary PILOT

Giving meaning to learning: an activity integrated right from Block 1 to develop cross-disciplinary skills and articulate learning from different disciplines. Discover the project.

  • Bab(b)elade (Babel - Babbelen - Balade) An inter-student collaboration for the development of oral skills and (self)evaluation in the target language

Let's develop authentic and informal contacts through E-tandems and language exchanges to stimulate the desire to acquire the Other's language, overcome divides and open up to intercultural discovery. Discover the project.

  • First steps in the clinical approach as a bachelor of medicine: knowing how to do and knowing how to be

From the bachelor's level onwards, let's offer simulated situations to initiate the care-giver-client relationship and the clinical approach. Discover the project.

First call for PUNCH projects - 2013

Flipped classroom and peer instruction in medicine

A pedagogical approach that reverses the traditional organization of learning activities. The aim of this project is to introduce the methods of hybrid devices (blended learning) and flipped classrooms (classe inversée) at the Faculty of Medicine, starting with the respiratory physiology course (respiratory system (MMED327) in BAC2).

The principle of flipped classrooms consists in moving the transmissive part of teaching out of the auditorium using E-learning tools to enable activities and exercises of a higher taxonomic level to be carried out in the auditorium, by promulgating peer interaction (peer instruction), with the teacher. The approach is constructivist, aiming at the development of knowledge and know-how based on knowledge acquired transmissively at home and on the web.

This method is particularly suited to respiratory physiology, the learning of theoretical knowledge that can be taught transmissively and the application and manipulation of this knowledge in pathological or particular contexts enabling in-depth learning and skills to be built.

Resources:

Physics and Challenges

A project-based approach in Physics Block 1.

This project involves setting up a new seminar-style course entitled "Physics and Challenges", which will be simultaneously supervised by teachers and students.

It aims to introduce students very quickly to doing "good physics" by applying the disciplinary content of the main first-year courses (mechanics, electricity, programming, thermodynamics, etc.).

The aim is to sustain motivation by proposing projects in the form of challenges. This applied physics involves the design and implementation of a practical realization (e.g. The Stirling engine, The water rocket, Lego robots) corresponding to a possible solution in relation to a theoretical problem posed.

Students have to learn to ask questions, innovate, problematize, submit technical solutions and work in groups.

Supervision is provided not only by a team of lecturers, but also via tutoring by doubling peers who can, through their proximity and academic experience - even if unaccomplished - exert a positive influence on first-timers and acquire, through this activity, a valued status by repeating their year in a more dynamic and constructive way.

POD-EN-MATH

The project consists in proposing and having students produce Podcasts in mathematics.

The project aims to offer students online access to a series of short audio and video sequences in discrete mathematics.

These sequences offer structured, prepared content, each lasting a maximum of ten minutes. These are not sequences recorded online during a lesson, but meticulously prepared sequences that can be reused from year to year.

The aim is to highlight the approach, mathematical reasoning but also the appropriate use of mathematical language. The aim is to familiarize students with the modeling approach, an approach that will accompany them throughout their computer science career, and thus to support students in becoming independent in mathematics and in their study.

Thanks to the online availability of these sequences, students can at any time access an explanation of an essential exercise that they have not understood, or the construction of a demonstration. The emphasis is really on the process, on the intuitive understanding of equations, in order to encourage a student to speak up, to build his mathematical thinking.

In the second year of the project, the students themselves will be able to build their own podcast and will also use the podcasts upstream. The use of these will be clearly integrated into the pedagogical learning approach.

Publications on the project

TRANSPRO

Videos of classroom interactions to collegially develop complex, reflexive and interdisciplinary analysis skills.

This project aims to develop the professionalizing facet of masters degrees with a didactic focus and the agrégation, and to help students develop skills conducive to their professional integration by working particularly on skills for analyzing complex situations.

The aim is to design and experiment with a device that integrates filmed sequences and to organize collective, interdisciplinary analysis sessions of them.

This development is being carried out as part of a collaboration between all the didactic teachers (generalist and specialty) who teach in these programs.

It assumes an active approach on the part of students in both gathering information and analyzing it. In addition, this project leads the team of didacticians to review their current ways of designing courses by integrating joint analysis sessions conducted from a comparative didactics perspective jointly by different didacticians.

Finally, the project develops complementarity between face-to-face pedagogical strategies and distance self-study.

The possibility of accessing a bank of filmed professional situations characteristic of the difficulties encountered by teachers at the start of their careers and to various analyses of professional activity also implies that students develop distance-working skills in a lifelong learning perspective.

PuncHIST

Towards a collective and modular construction of practical courses in History.

Supported by the History department's teaching team, this project aims to thoroughly reform a series of practical courses designed to impart know-how to undergraduate students.

Today, in Namur as in other universities, teaching of the skills that underpin the historical discipline (documentary research, critical analysis of information sources, communication of results) suffers from two weaknesses.

Firstly, it involves a series of courses which, despite their complementarity, operate in silos and give rise to separate assessments,

Secondly, these courses have not truly integrated the digital turn that is disrupting historical practices (given the online availability of a growing number of documents and research tools).

In this context, this project aims to evolve an atomized set of courses entrusted to different teachers towards a global teaching of transversal skills supervised by a pedagogical team.

Concretely, the main objectives of this project are:

  • Disenclaving a series of practical courses via integration around common exercises and collective assessment of key student work,
  • Collectively redefining documentary research and historical criticism in the light of new technologies
  • Making students more active in teaching processes (via, in particular, a digital interface that will enable student research to be published and promoted).

Cross-disciplinary course in pharmacy

Decompartmentalize learning and activate students in face-to-face and e-learning.

In general, students compartmentalize different courses during the learning process. This project aims to counter this tendency by introducing a cross-disciplinary course.

This involves integrating fundamental concepts applicable to several courses and using them as a bridge between basic and medical sciences, while keeping the professional angle in mind.

This project also implements a new pedagogical approach based on six principles:

  1. Defining and expressing course objectives very clearly in terms of learning outcomes, including a "criterion-referenced" grid.
  2. Regularly activate acquired knowledge and prerequisites through reminders and quizzes planned for each class session
  3. Instablish explicit links and reminders linked to other disciplines (chemistry, physics, statistics...)
  4. Put into practice in TD the notions taught, in particular through the presentation of case studies.
  5. Modify the traditional organization of TD. The teacher no longer gives the correction, but accompanies the students in small groups in solving the cases.
  6. Instating formative assessment (in e-learning and face-to-face) throughout the year

Opening up to the world

Towards active, integrated teaching that is open to the professional world of information and communication sciences.

This project mobilizes a multidisciplinary team of teachers from two faculties (Faculty of Economic, Social and Management Sciences and Faculty of Philosophy and Letters), the Audiovisual Service (SAVE) and the School of Modern Languages (ELV).

It pursues four objectives: the integration of teaching, the strengthening of relations between teaching and the professional world, the articulation of theoretical training with practice through a project-based pedagogy and the strengthening of the pedagogical identity of the Information and Communication program.

The project is built around five complementary axes.

The first axis concerns the "Business Communication" module, where the Business Communication and Communication Semiotics courses, accessible to third-year Information and Communication bachelor students, propose an innovation by enabling articulation around a common analysis project based on a professional reality.

Axis 2, entitled "Culture and audiovisual module", aims to create a film club enabling teachers of several courses to bring their students together for joint screening and analysis sessions.

As for axis 3, it constitutes an extension of the project pursued by the practical work in the second-year bachelor's course Theories of Communication, namely the production of an audiovisual production by students aimed at questioning the theories seen in the course.

Axis 4 seeks to create an internship jury as a final test and ritual of passage to the master's degree, marking the end of the bachelor's degree cycle followed at the University of Namur.

Finally, axis 5 entitled "Creative and integrative end-of-cycle work" concerns the production, by students in the "Culture and audiovisual" module, of an audiovisual document around a question/theme relevant to their internship experience.

EVIAN

Towards an Integrated and Active Veterinary Education in Namur.

The EVIAN project is a scheme that combines:

  • Collaborative learning of animal anatomy

This learning works in inter-year groups (made up of a Bac 3 student, 2 Bac 2 students, 4 Bac 1 students, one apprenticeship) using a TBL (Team Based Learning) approach based on the main clinical situations to be dealt with (in line with a skills repository we have just drawn up for veterinary surgeons in the French-speaking Community of Belgium) relating to each of the animal's 6 anatomical regions (head, thoracic limb, thorax, abdomen, pelvic limb, pelvis);

  • Integration work

On a TBL basis and reserved for Bac 3 students, this integration work aims to broaden the approach to the problems proposed to disciplines other than anatomy and mobilizing teachers of these other disciplines;

  • An integrated exam

This final assignment confronts the Bac 3 student with a problem-situation to be solved, and enables the student's achievements in all subjects to be assessed by a multidisciplinary panel of teachers.

The device should also encourage, on the occasion of problem design, interdisciplinary dialogue and consensus on subjects, even their reduction and rationalization, paving the way for an integrated curriculum and the creation of space for more active teaching interventions.

Furthermore, the scheme could in future naturally be articulated downstream of teaching in modules (of anatomical regions, or systems) that would be validated successively and in advance (from bac 1 to bac 3), before a final integrated approach during the last quadrimester of the third bachelor's year. The pilot study aims to show that the scheme is likely to increase student motivation and develop a transversal mastery of knowledge.

This project is part of the evolution of integration actions already carried out within the veterinary department (inter-year clinical groups, multidisciplinary and transgenerational work...)

Publications on the project

ChimPhy2

Online educational courses aimed at integrating basic courses (chemistry, physics) and animal physiology.

This project involves the creation of an interactive learning platform based on interdisciplinarity and aimed at students across the entire bachelor's degree in life sciences.

In the first instance, the courses concerned are Animal Physiology (Blocks 2 and 3 in veterinary medicine), Chemistry and Physics (Block 1). These disciplines were chosen by the project promoters because of their shared experience in interdisciplinary teaching.

The website consists of different learning paths highlighting the strong links that exist between the basic sciences, in particular Chemistry and Physics, and physiology. They are built around photographs and films recorded at the Department of Veterinary Medicine's Centre de Recherches Ovines (educational farm).

Two entries are possible - through the basic sciences or through physiology - so that these pathways can be used by every student, throughout the three years of Baccalaureate.

The motivation of Bac1 students for the basic sciences should be greatly enhanced by this real-life perspective; the learning of Chemistry and Physics being done through concrete application cases.

The tool put in place will therefore enable a progressive and deep integration of the basic science notions needed for specialization courses. This better integration and the ability to re-establish the link between a specialization course and the basic sciences in a guided way ultimately leads to a much deeper understanding of specific subjects such as Physiology.

During the 3rd year of the proposed project, a transposition of the tool to another life sciences study section (Biology) is planned, and an extension to other courses may be envisaged within the veterinary medicine section.

At UNamur level, this tool will be the first of its kind, as well as at the level of the other Universities organizing the Baccalauréat en Médecine vétérinaire in the Communauté Française de Belgique. On an international level, the main originality will lie in the fact that students will be confronted with real cases in their own study context.

HAA

Towards accounting for the workload of academics in Hours of Learning Support.

Today, in our university, the only unit used to measure an academic's workload is the lesson hour. This method of accounting encourages massive recourse to ex cathedra teaching and makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for many academics to imagine, develop and implement innovative learning processes.

With the aim of encouraging teachers to use their academic freedom to design and practice forms of teaching that are better adapted than traditional ex cathedra courses, this project proposes to change the accounting of academics' workload on the basis of hours of learning assistance (HAA) rather than on the criterion of hours of teaching.

Our university must acknowledge that our society has become a knowledge society. One of the most striking features of this transformation is that students' access to information is now far beyond that available to the previous generation; a novelty which, in terms of teaching, de facto abolishes the privilege previously enjoyed by the lecture. Today, we need to encourage each of our professors to use their imagination to innovate and replace this form of teaching with appropriate forms of student supervision.

We propose that certain departments in the Faculty of Science experiment with a new accounting system for the teaching loads of their academics. This would be implemented during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years and, after evaluation, could be extended to other departments, or even generalized to the whole University, which would thus find it easier to bring the organization of studies into line with the latest draft of the Decree defining the landscape of higher education and the academic organization of studies.

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