Sharing practice with colleagues on educational issues provides an opportunity to experiment and reflect on the ways in which education may change in the future. With a view to meet the changing needs of learners, collaboration and the exchange of feedback with teaching peers can lead to innovative proposals from experiences at Politecnico: these can become a benchmark for teaching at all levels in all disciplinary areas.
Having connections with a variety of stakeholders in the local area enriches the university while simultaneously allowing it to share its community with the wider public. The objective is to bring about educational transformations that are shared, pervasive, evolving and capable of fitting into local scenarios with a national and international perspective.
The TLlab Teaching Community is a virtual and physical place where faculty members meet to give their own contribution to university education, both as teachers and as learners .
The Teaching and Language Lab (TLlab) at Politecnico di Torino is developing as an incubator of educational innovation and professional development. It promotes projects and research to make teaching - our first mission - more effective.
The TLlab is an open academic community committed to putting the student at the centre of teaching and aiming for educational equity, inclusion, multiculturalism, and the development of critical thinking and creativity.
That is why the TLlab researches and promotes the use of a variety of tools, spaces and teaching methods, both new and established. Through the use of modern pedagogical approaches and new technologies, the teaching staff supports student learning within a context of shared educational objectives.
This requires the active participation of students through experiential pathways that foster collaboration and promote interdisciplinarity.
It also entails training future professionals for specific skills, providing them with the level of autonomy necessary to face the challenges of an ever-changing society.
The Board is made up of the Coordinators of each of the 15 Collegi, the language experts, the administrative staff belonging to the Course Catalogue and Quality Assurance Unit , the staff of the Information Technology Department, the Rector's Advisor for the Teaching Lab and the Language Centre, the Rector’s Advisor for Teaching Technologies and the Vice Rector for Education.
Training Project 2017_ Politecnico di Torino promoted a pedagogical training project (“Learn to teach in higher education[MC1] [MMA2] ”) led by Prof. Ettore Felisatti and Prof. Anna Serbati from Università degli Studi di Padova. In 2017, the first iteration of the project involved 121 young researchers from Politecnico. In 2018 the project was repeated with another 60 members of the teaching staff.
Teaching Lab Launch 2018_ In 2018, the newly-elected Rector appointed a Rector’s Advisor for the Teaching Lab and the Language Centre among the members of its governing team.
In the same year, Politecnico adopted its Strategic Plan 2018-2024 - Polito4Impact, which strongly reaffirms that “teaching is our first mission” and that the Teaching Lab will be “a tool for the continuous improvement of our faculty members’ teaching skills and for training new lecturers”.
Creation of the TLlab 2019_ After analysing a number of international experiences and exchanging opinions on our local experiences within the Collegi, the Teaching and Language laboratory (TLlab) was established to run workshops and share good practice within Politecnico.
Digital support 2020_ In response to the COVID health emergency, the TLlab supported the teaching staff in the sudden shift to remote teaching by providing support for new teaching tools and methods.
Three-year higher education training project 2021_The team which created the 2017 training project, designed a project with a three-fold objective for TLlab: basic training for new lecturers (L2T), mentoring with experienced lecturers (M2P) and lifelong training.
Opening of the TLlab Building (Palazzina) 2022_ The TLlab becomes actively engaged in the training of Politecnico teaching staff by implementing its three-year project, launching the Teaching Week and inaugurating its own space (Palazzina) located in Via Boggio.
