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Embedding Grand Challenges: A New Teaching Toolkit for UCL Educators
25 June 2025
UCL Grand Challenges has created a new teaching toolkit to help UCL educators embed the Grand Challenges into the curriculum.
A new teaching toolkit has been published to help module leaders embed a challenge-led, interdisciplinary approach into their teaching and ensure it reflects UCL’s Curriculum Design Principle 1, ‘Cutting-Edge Content’. The principles are part of UCL’s Programme Excellence Project (PEP2) curriculum review.
“Teaching around the Grand Challenges offers students who care about the planet and their communities an opportunity to learn how to turn their knowledge into impact. In doing so, they learn essential skills that will benefit them in their future careers,” explained Dr Elena Falco (UCL Grand Challenges), who developed the toolkit with an Academic Advisory Group chaired by Professor Doug Bourn (UCL Faculty of Education & Society).
Professor Bourn added: “At the same time, we realise how demanding teaching can be, and how challenging it can be to fold new material into existing courses. Recognising this challenge, we’ve developed a concise, user-friendly teaching toolkit, packed with practical tools and guidance on how to embed challenge-led education in teaching.
The toolkit outlines the value of challenge-led education and offers guidance on how to connect learning with practice, address complexity, promote responsible innovation, and develop pedagogical methods to support students in conducting creative, meaningful work.
For those seeking inspiration, the toolkit also includes interviews with UCL lecturers who have successfully embedded the Grand Challenges in their teaching, including examples from engineering and mathematics.
We’re also exploring other ways to support teaching staff in engaging with the Grand Challenges. We welcome ideas on how to expand this effort and, most importantly, input from teaching staff on how we can support them in using the new toolkit."
Let us know what support you need to integrate the Grand Challenges into your teaching by completing this quick poll:
To contribute ideas or offer support, please contact Dr Falco at elena.falco@ucl.ac.uk.
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