Digital4Sustainability in a Paper Symposium at the 2026 Education Research Days Congress in Utrecht

The 2026 Education Research Days Congress (ORD) brought together roughly 850 educational researchers and professionals, from researchers and policymakers to teachers across the Netherlands and Flanders, for three days (1–3 July) in Utrecht, with a shared focus on how education can help address pressing societal challenges. Within that programme, Digital4Sustainability joined two sister European Alliances in a paper symposium reflecting on institutional capacity-building for education in transition.

A symposium around three complementary projects

Transnational Collaboration: Innovation in Higher Education and Professional Learning

The symposium was chaired by Dr. Mohamed Eledeisy, who gave the keynote speech, reflecting on the role of higher education institutions in priority domains such as digital transformation, sustainable development, and educational innovation. The transformative pace of change in higher education is increasingly becoming a defining condition of the sector itself, demanding a higher level of adaptability at both institutional and individual levels. Universities are being asked to assume new roles that reach well beyond their traditional remit, with many, including HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (HU), looking closely at the scope of a fourth mission alongside education, research, and knowledge valorisation; for example, through the promotion of lifelong learning or the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Rather than focusing on a single initiative, the symposium sessions, involving Dr. Pascal Ravesteijn, Dr. Xander Lub and Dr. Steven Haveman, reflected on three European Alliance projects within the Digital Large-Scale Partnership (Digital LSP), each at a different stage of implementation, to critically compare how they co-create, pilot, and embed new educational practices in response to societal transitions in sustainability, digitalisation, and the labour market. Two of these, ARISA and SMARCO, connect into the wider Pact for Skills action.
ARISA, concluded in May 2026, embedded responsible-AI competencies through two new learning programmes for tech professionals, policymakers and decision-making audiences, while SMARCO, in an earlier stage, mapped the skills gaps of smart-city engineers and planners through large-scale evidence-based approach to smart communities’ skills supply and demand analysis, as well as early short-term courses for Higher Education and Vocational Education and Training.

Digital4Sustainability: from needs analysis to practice-based learning

Among the three, Digital4Sustainability’s contribution drew particular attention, with a discussion on reskilling and upskilling as a way of connecting digital transformation and sustainability. While sustainability is guiding societal adaptation to challenges such as population growth and the protection of ecological and social systems, digitalisation is simultaneously transforming modern organisations as one of the most impactful macro trends of our time. The topic was developed, through the project’s research efforts, translated into concrete Digital Sustainability Skills Strategies and Learning Programmes for target groups of different backgrounds and levels.

Evidence from the first upskilling pilots demonstrated significant interest, reaching 468 European learners. Ten urgent upskilling pilots focused on topics such as digital technologies for sustainable reporting, smart data analytics, digital twins as a tool to promote sustainability, digital accessibility for everyone, and artificial intelligence for improved sustainability reporting. With 93% of learners coming from the professional field with an advanced educational background, the evaluation of the pilot sessions’ perceived relevance revealed strong positive feedback: a significant majority of respondents (circa 70%) indicated significant increase in their knowledge and 82% considered the programme highly valuable.

Looking ahead to the ongoing piloting phase

With the urgent upskilling round complete in early 2025, the symposium’s attention turned to the project’s ongoing chapter: piloting the longer-term, modular learning programmes developed across the consortium. Participant feedback and stakeholder input from the first pilots is fundamental in guiding this phase, refining learning methods, assessment design, and delivery formats.

HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht has already delivered one of the Digital4Sustainability online self-paced courses to its international summer school students, with a further set of pilots planned in the coming months. The current institutional dialogue centres on the question ‘’how to move from successful pilots to sustainable integration at the core’’ with efforts for long-term embedding, supporting the university’s mission towards the reskilling and upskilling of the existing workforce.

A shared, longer-term commitment across Europe

Beyond Digital4Sustainability’s own trajectory, the symposium’s discussions pointed to a broader pattern. For HU, projects such as Digital4Sustainability, alongside ARISA and SMARCO, are an expression of a long-term commitment: to international and European cooperation as a route to educational innovation, to student success through curricula that stay connected to real labour-market change, and to lifelong learning as a continuous thread linking initial education, professional practice, and reskilling later in a career. This commitment aligns with the wider, multi-level vision shared across the Digital LSP, the Pact for Skills, and the European Skills Agenda.

For Digital4Sustainability, the symposium reaffirmed a working hypothesis the project has tested since its launch: that closing the digital and sustainability skills gap depends not only on research and piloting, but on structured, sustained dialogue between education, research, and the professional field, linking national and regional efforts within a clear strategic pathway toward the next generation of the European workforce.

Read the Paper Symposium Abstract here.