I think the teaching offered at our faculty has always been characterized by the desire to integrate more traditional methodologies in the field of humanities teaching with more innovative ones. By traditional methodologies in the humanities, I mean classroom discussions between the teacher and students or amongst the students themselves. In fact, these methodologies are used in seminars in the European Higher Education Area.

By innovative methodologies, I mean using a virtual classroom for subjects or using materials available on, for example, YouTube. In this regard, it is worth recalling that the Faculty of Humanities had the first teaching innovation unit, when Professor Dolors Folch was the dean. After, under Dean Miquel Berga, we were also the first to develop a pilot plan for a bachelor’s degree, within the framework of the Bologna Plan. So, I think we have always tried to integrate these two ways of understanding teaching.

There are currently several considerations that I think should guide teaching innovation in the humanities in the coming years. First, we need to incorporate the possibility of learning professional competencies specifically related to the world of humanities (e.g. those needed for museum management, cultural mediation or publishing), so that our graduates can quickly find jobs at ‘traditional’ workplaces, such as museums, government agencies, or publishing houses, but also in more innovative fields, such as music festival planning or the creation of new cultural spaces on the Internet.

Second, we need to improve the development of the general professional competencies – such as public speaking, teamwork or communication via both written and audiovisual media – that will afford them easier access to both these kinds of environments and others, such as international companies, media outlets, the world of online culture or the audiovisual world.

‘We need to continue incorporating active teaching and learning methodologies that give 21st-century students a voice in the classroom’

Third, we need to continue incorporating active teaching and learning methodologies that give 21st-century students – with their different interests, knowledge and prior competencies from those of ‘arts’ students a few decades ago – a voice in the classroom, taking into account the teacher’s role as a guide and collaborative work.

Finally, teaching staff and deans should continuously and critically update the content and aims of the course plans and curricula, to adapt them to the real needs of the new generations, without neglecting the basic humanistic training we want to provide.

This perspective is absolutely necessary to understand today’s world. The bachelor’s degree in Global Studies, which is one of the most recent degree programmes at UPF, is not the only one to take this perspective, incorporating disciplines that did not traditionally share teaching spaces, such as geography, communication, health or law. The bachelor’s programme in Humanities, which we launched in the 1992-1993 academic year, took this interdisciplinary perspective too, when we decided not only to create a programme dedicated to teaching subjects devoted to diverse humanistic disciplines, such as literature, art, thought or history. We also chose a model that made it possible for the same subject to be taught by a lecturer who conducts interdisciplinary research (e.g. literature and cinema) or by multiple lecturers who all deal with the same subject but in different fields (e.g. gender).

‘The cross- and interdisciplinary perspective is absolutely necessary to understand today’s world’

Beyond the scope of the Faculty of Humanities, I think today’s world is so complex that this interdisciplinary perspective is essential to the training of any university student. That is why, when I had academic responsibilities, I advocated that all curricula should offer students the opportunity to benefit from a personalized, cross-disciplinary education, in which they could choose, according to their individual interests, from amongst various minors that would allow them to supplement their training with initial studies in another discipline, as well as the opportunity to start their university studies with an Open Degree.

Rather than talking about ‘the competencies young people should acquire in an internationalized educational environment’, I would say that an internationalized educational environment offers young people the opportunity to acquire competencies that will be essential for them to become well-trained professionals and good 21st-century citizens. To name just a few: the ability to interact with people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds and to communicate in languages other than your own; sensitivity to the customs and beliefs of people from other cultures that may be very different from your own; or curiosity about different ways of doing things from how they are done in your own culture or country. Studying abroad provides this type of context, and I recommend doing it, because it also fosters personal growth at other levels, such as the affective one, and makes it easier to become an independent person who will better adapt to future life changes.

‘Studying abroad makes it easier to become an independent person who will better adapt to future life changes’

Actually, in recent years and decades, I would say that society as a whole has become more multicultural due to the presence of citizens originally from other countries, other cultures, and who speak other languages. Catalan universities – not just UPF, but the entire Catalan university system – have already begun to receive local students from families who come from other countries and who therefore have a fluent command of other languages, apart from Catalan and Spanish; they have different values and slightly different cultural customs from other students in our classrooms. I think that this variety, in terms of cultures and even language repertoires, enriches university classrooms. This richness allows local students to learn in an intercultural context, because they are in contact with these other values, with these different values and customs.

In a certain sense, you could say that local students are ‘internationalizing at home’ when they are in our university classrooms. They also come into contact with Erasmus students or exchange students from the US, for example. They are experiencing this internationalization because they are in contact with people who already come from very different backgrounds. So I think it is generally a source of richness.

Improving English language training is not a matter of a single measure. It requires continuing to make the methodological changes in primary, secondary and even higher education classrooms that have been being promoted in recent years in the country: for example, more specialized, better trained teachers, such as those who earn the current Master’s Degree in Teacher Training, and more active and meaningful classroom methodologies, such as project work – in which the foreign language or languages are used in addition to the local ones – or integrated language and content teaching so that the language learning is contextualized.

Other measures are necessary but more difficult to carry out, such as reducing the number of students in primary and secondary school classes (and not just in the foreign language classes) or increasing the presence of English in audiovisual media, for example, in films or interviews that are usually dubbed into Catalan or Spanish, which deprives listeners or viewers of the chance to listen to and familiarize themselves with other languages.

Yes, we are technologically prepared. We also have professionals, including computer technicians, teaching experts and teachers, who are already implementing or helping to implement methodologies that take advantage of the resources the digital world has to offer and which our students have easy and natural access to. Still, it is difficult, or at the very least unwieldy, to implement changes in the Catalan university system in particular and the Spanish one in general: the system suffers from legislative and administrative constraints that hinder the normalization of teaching outside the classroom and collaborative learning both inside and outside the classroom, in which the teacher plays a less prominent role. The same administrative hurdles make any attempt to transform the education system too slow to adapt it to a rapidly changing world.

‘Administrative hurdles make any attempt to transform the education system too slow to adapt it to a rapidly changing world’

This is a two-part question, but the answer is fairly simple. No one today would deny that smartphones, like computers, are part of our lives, including young people’s lives. They offer us tools and information channels that facilitate access to information that was previously out of reach for many people. However, as with the use of any other information channel or resource (for example, physical books or television), teachers need to do the work of teachers; they need to guide young people in the critical and responsible use of these online resources.

‘Teachers need to do the work of teachers; they need to guide young people in the critical and responsible use of online resources’

Universities have been offering online degrees for years. It is relatively easy to convey and learn content, and even values, with purely non-face-to-face teaching. As for competencies, tasks must be very well thought out to ensure their development. Some, such as critical thinking, can be developed with a teacher who provides good ‘remote’ guidance: all non-face-to-face teaching platforms already include video and audio channels that groups or individual students can use to engage with the teacher or other students in a way similar to how they would in a physical classroom. Nevertheless, in my opinion, other competencies need to be learned in person.

‘No bachelor’s or master’s degree in education at any level should lack real guided placements offering quality and professionalism’

For the master’s degree programme in Teacher Training, for example, which UPF and UOC already teach partially online, face-to-face training in secondary school or Official Language School classrooms is essential, that is, real, sufficiently long and continuous professional placements. The purpose of these placements is to ensure genuine interaction with the citizens who will be served in future and, therefore, to ensure the development and achievement of the competencies a good teacher needs to have. In other words, just as we would not be able to conceive of a degree in nursing or medicine that did not include face-to-face internships with real patients, no bachelor’s or master’s degree in education at any level should lack real guided placements in classrooms with real students offering quality and professionalism.

I will speak from my own experience, as I taught two undergraduate subjects during the lockdown. For me, as for many of my colleagues, it was an exhausting experience due to the long hours needed to rapidly adapt the subjects to non-face-to-face teaching. However, it was also a very enriching experience. In terms of generalizable lessons learnt, I will mention only three and in no particular order, since they all seem equally important to me and are related. The first is that forums, videoconferencing and chats can be used in virtual classrooms to enhance students’ active and meaningful participation, a participation that is not necessarily ephemeral, as can happen with oral participation in a physical classroom. Because of the persistence of writing in virtual spaces, students and teachers generally strive to communicate more and better. Writing is thus recovered as an essential tool for communication and the shared construction of knowledge, although this role requires both students and teachers to put in additional effort and time.

The second lesson is the need to create spaces in the virtual classroom for academic but also spontaneous speech, where both teachers and students can express themselves, explain content, resolve doubts, offer examples of or perform procedures, and stimulate or lead debates: videoconferencing and videos have allowed us to do it.

‘The basis of good teaching is motivating students to learn and share knowledge’

Finally, the third lesson is related to the last one, namely, the need to build spaces or moments of mutual understanding with and between students – as happens with good face-to-face teaching – to create a sense of micro-community within the cosmos of the virtual classroom for each subject. We can wrongly come to understand or use virtual classrooms as mere repositories for materials and tasks that students must navigate alone. However, the basis for good teaching is motivating students to learn and share knowledge, and that will only happen in the classroom if students feel that they have the teacher’s full support and are partners in achieving the established learning goals.