Innovative Teaching Projects

1. Project “Methodologies and Technologies for Teaching – Te(A)chTink project” presented by Prof. Ottavia Trevisan - Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FISSPA)

The Te(a)chThink project, developed within the course unit Methodologies and Technologies for Teaching in the five-year Primary Teacher Education programme, addresses the tension between digital innovation and pedagogical responsibility with future teachers, offering conceptual tools to decide when, how and why to use (or not use) technologies to support learning. The teaching design, inspired by the Culture of Thinking, adopts a blended structure with weekly debates on authentic cases, including international ones, rubric-based peer review and systematic feedback, framing assessment as assessment for learning. In the 2024-2025 edition, a module dedicated to AI literacy with the educational chatbot “GuessMeEd” guided students in the critical exploration of how generative systems work, their reliability and their ethical implications. Elective yet substantial and steady participation, together with the progressive improvement in performance, documents the effectiveness of the model. Te(a)chThink continues to seek to create a community of thought aimed at training teachers who are able to integrate technologies in a conscious, reflective and responsible way.  

2. Project “Compliance and Anti Money Laundering” presented by Prof. Francesco Ambrosini - Department of Economics and Management “Marco Fanno” (DSEA)

Compliance & Anti-Money Laundering is a student-centred, data-driven course that transforms the classroom into a professional learning laboratory. In interdisciplinary and international teams, students develop an end-to-end risk-based AML (Anti-Money Laundering) procedure (namely customer risk assessment, transaction monitoring and emerging challenges such as virtual activities) using real or realistic datasets and evidence-based reasoning. Learning is supported by formative feedback, peer assessment and an authentic final hackathon, in which teams must justify their decisions on anonymised real cases while operating in compliance with regulatory constraints.

3. Project “Collective Critical Mapping Laboratory” presented by Prof. Mariasole Pepa - Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World (DiSSGeA)

The Collective Critical Mapping Laboratory, within the Master's Degree Programme in Local Development, enables students to put into practice the knowledge acquired during the course in the city of Padua—where the programme is based—particularly through collaboration with the collective Decolonize Your Eyes and the kollektiv orangotango. By linking classroom discussions on decolonial theories with practices situated in urban space, the laboratory offers the class a space to explore urban space through collective mapping, connecting critical reflection with concrete interventions in the city and with collaborative research methods. In this context, critical mapping becomes both a research method and an embodied practice through which students explore local power relations, spatial injustices and forms of resistance. The city itself thus becomes a classroom and mapping a tool for imagining alternative futures.

4. Project “The Class Debate” presented by Prof. Lucia Regolin - Department of General Psychology (DPG)

“The Class Debate” transforms the Animal Psychology classroom into an environment of co-design, where students’ autonomy becomes the driving force of the learning pathway. At the heart of the project is a public debate (Oxford style) on scientific issues of global significance linked to the human–animal relationship, inviting participants to engage their argumentation skills, critical thinking and ethical sensitivity. Assessment has a strong reflective component: the debate carries significant weight in the final examination and is reworked in a written assignment that encourages deep ethical development by asking students to reconsider their own position in the light of the public discussion. The solid active learning framework, the structurally international perspective of the class and the attention paid to scientific communication for a broad audience make this practice easily transferable to other contexts and highly impactful for the academic community

Finally, the Committee unanimously decides to award a special mention to the Project “Behavioural change nella medicina preventiva: una didattica multidisciplinare per un apprendimento inter-professionale” presented by Prof. Francesca Battista and Prof. Daniel Neunhaeuserer - Department of Medicine (DIMED).

The project arises from the need to provide future health professionals, already during their university education, with operational skills to promote the adoption of healthy lifestyles, a cornerstone of the primary and secondary prevention of chronic diseases. The proposal applies an innovative, active and experiential teaching model, involving students from Medicina e Chirurgia, Medicine & Surgery, Dietistica and Scienze e Tecniche dell’Attività Motoria Preventiva e Adattata in a genuinely multidisciplinary pathway. The structure, inspired by Smart Learning Design, integrates interactive seminars, theoretical-practical workshops and simulation sessions, with progressive learning outcomes and an assessment process that becomes a professional experience. Central to the project is the direct experimentation of inter-professional patient management, through peer learning and peer evaluation, in order to develop clinical, decision-making, communication and collaborative abilities and skills in realistic and multidisciplinary contexts. The involvement of international teaching staff and guests enriches the pathway with a global perspective oriented towards best practice, moving beyond the traditional single-discipline and transmissive approach.