New publication by HFU professor Ullrich Dittler
How will teaching and learning take place at universities in the future? What role will instructors play in a world full of AI applications, videos and social media? And why does university instruction in some places still look the same as it did 50 years ago? These and many other questions are addressed in the newly published anthology “Higher Education Development of the Future,” edited by Prof. Dr. Ullrich Dittler, a professor at Furtwangen University, together with Prof. Dr. Christian Kreidl (Vienna).
The way knowledge is generated, shared and applied is undergoing a profound transformation. Higher education institutions are in the midst of a two-pronged transformation process. On the one hand, they continue to process the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic regarding digital teaching, flexible study structures and student-centered approaches. On the other hand, they must further develop governance structures, curricula and teaching competencies so that artificial intelligence can be used — critically, creatively and responsibly — as an integral part of academic work and learning cultures.
This volume analyses the current state of higher education teaching and examines key questions in higher education pedagogy: What roles do instructors assume in an era of diverse learning and information media?; How can critical thinking be specifically taught, fostered, and assessed at universities?; And what does it mean for curriculum development, course design, assessment formats and quality assurance if universities truly want to position themselves as “future-ready”?
A particular strength is the multi-perspective approach: contributions from faculty, alumni, corporate representatives and students highlight just how diverse expectations, experiences and visions for “higher education development of the future” are — and where common threads for innovative higher education development are emerging.
With *Higher Education Development of the Future*, Prof. Dr. Ullrich Dittler makes an important contribution to the current debate on the further development of higher education institutions at the intersection of tradition, digitalisation, and AI.
Internal link opens in the same window:Prof. Dr. Ullrich Dittler is an expert in media-supported learning, serves on various committees focused on higher education pedagogy, and is the scientific director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Furtwangen University.
Bibliographic information: Dittler, Ullrich & Kreidl, Christian (2026), Hochschulentwicklung der Zukunft: Lehre, Prüfungen, Qualitätsmanagement, Stuttgart: Schäffer-Poeschel