The Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Education and Learning is closed from 1 January 2025. For over a decade the LDE Centre for Education and Learning explored innovation of online and blended teaching and learning in higher education. The heritage of LDE-CEL is a will remain in a collection of scientific publications accessible via this site.
Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Education and Learning (LDE-CEL) was an interuniversity and interdisciplinary research centre as well as an innovation and training platform that aimed to discover what makes university learning and teaching work and how it can be innovated and improved. The three universities were a testing ground for continuous innovation and improvement of university learning and teaching. These were the main activities of CEL:
Research
Universities want their education to be evidence-based. Within the three universities, educational scientists conduct research into education and learning in order to discover the conditions for study success. Research in the centre is multidisciplinary and profits from comparative analyses, mixed methods, large research populations and big data. PhD students work on the CEL research programme that concentrates on online learning and covers three main areas. These are the characteristics of:
- The teacher
- The learner
- The learning environment
Within the LDE universities a broader PhD Network was formed to connect all PhDs researching higher education.
Development and Innovation
CEL aimed to give a powerful impetus to the development of innovative online, blended, and on-campus teaching strategies and materials. We bring together higher education developers from various universities to exchange ideas and projects and to take new joint initiatives during symposia that are called ‘Innovation Rooms’. They report and discuss their projects, and look for opportunities for collaboration. CEL also has national and international partners to contribute to programmes such as SURF and ERASMUS+.
Professional Training
Teaching staff was supported in developing their teaching skills by directly involving them in innovating their courses and designing their own training. The ‘Academic Teaching Lab’ provides teachers context and ideas to practically learn and hands-on develop the education they provide. Each year the ‘Leadership in Education Course’ enables and empowers directors and managers of education to develop a broad en practice-oriented vision on education and educational innovation. In addition, three ‘Training Modules’ for teachers have been developed on online learning and assessment.