Keywords: societal engagement through teaching; participatory methodologies; changing norms; co-creation

Despina, who is a lecturer in the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, focuses on innovative methods in teaching – participatory, dialogical and inclusive approaches. For instance, moving from traditional lectures to working in groups and collectively discussing questions “What is time?”, “What is a human”?

Another method is increasing the use of video, sound, emoticons in teaching –  enabling communication with students by adapting to their preferred way of communication – language used in social media. Following Despina, this greatly increases creativity and reflexivity. Despina in her teaching approach strives to go beyond the written text, and to challenge the “blackboard teaching”, giving the students a chance to try other forms of expression.  Bringing students’ own ways of communicating into the classroom automatically transforms informal communication into a form that is academically “acceptable”. Despina sees these innovative teaching methods as pathways to empowering the students through co-creating new learning practices with them.