What does meaningful student participation look like at DTU? How does teaching, the learning environment and the communities students are part of influence student participation? And how can DTU's teachers make participation attractive and meaningful?
This was the theme of the DTU Learning Labs summer school 2026, where experienced lecturers and educators were invited to explore the phenomenon Student Participation. Together, they spent three days in June examining and understanding how, across DTU, we can develop teaching that better inspires students to participate, thereby increasing the benefits they derive from their studies.
A forum for pedagogical and didactic discussions
The DTU Learning Labs Summer School is developed and facilitated by Associate Professor Pernille Rattleff and Educational Consultant Malene Bolding. Both have many years of experience in developing and facilitating pedagogical and didactic professional development programmes for university lecturers.
"UDTU is DTU's training programme for new lecturers, but we felt there was a need for an initiative aimed at our experienced and particularly dedicated lecturers, where we could each draw on our own expertise to explore an important theme relating to teaching development at DTU. This year, we chose student participation because it is very important to many of our lecturers," explains Malene Bolding.
The summer school has been developed as a programme for experienced and dedicated teachers who wish to develop their own and DTU's approach to teaching through immersion, reflection, dialogue and creative co-creation. The aim is to create a safe and playful space where participants can explore complex pedagogical issues together.
"We wanted to create a forum for pedagogical and didactic discussions, where we can collectively examine a key phenomenon in depth. Partly to inspire experienced DTU teachers to develop their own teaching practice further, and partly to contribute to the research-based development of engineering didactics," Malene Bolding says.
The students are part of the solution
A key element of the summer school is to involve, listen to and reflect on the students' perspectives. Following the first-day reflections, the lecturers formulate their own questions about student participation for a panel of DTU students. This gives the lecturers direct insight into the students' experiences and perspectives.
Thor Deibert, former chair of DTU's student union, Polyteknisk Forening, took part in last year's panel.
"It was exciting to see that what we said really mattered to the lecturers. It's great that we, as students, are listened to and taken seriously when it comes to something as important as our teaching and learning," he says.
The evaluation of the summer school shows that interaction with students ranks among the most valuable elements for participants. Many also take home specific ideas for boosting engagement in their own teaching. And that is precisely part of the summer school's purpose.
"It is an integral part of the concept that participants reflect on their own teaching practice throughout the three days we spend together. The in-depth academic discussions between participants from different educational and research fields at DTU, as well as the panel interviews with students, help to enrich these reflections," Pernille Rattleff explains.
Contributing to didactics as a field of research at DTU
The summer school aims to support teachers' professional development whilst contributing to organisational change. In this way, the summer school provides important input to the research-based development of engineering education, which Pernille Rattleff, together with a handful of PhD students and postdocs, is spearheading at DTU.
"At the summer school, we work on issues that are so complex and abstract that they can only be resolved within a dedicated and committed community. That is why it is important to have time for in-depth reflection and cross-disciplinary discussions to gain insights and move towards a deeper understanding," explains Pernille Rattleff.
Following this year's summer school, Malene Bolding and Pernille Rattleff are holding a workshop with students on student participation. Here, too, the aim is to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon.
After the workshop with the students, the insights gained from this year's summer school will be shared in a series of lunch meetings with department study board chairs, heads of department, and heads of studies, so they can be used to further develop teaching across DTU's departments and degree programmes.
Furthermore, the summer school's findings will be published in two or three research articles which, based on discussions, questions and answers, will seek to define what student participation can entail and what DTU can do to strengthen it in the engineering disciplines.
