Conference Program

This contribution examines the role of the digital component within Pathways for Transversal Skills and Career Orientation (PTSO), exploring how the integration of ICT contributes to reshaping teaching practices, organizational arrangements, and learning opportunities in upper secondary education. Particular attention is paid to the development of transversal, critical, and participatory competences.
The analysis is based on a “content analysis as a survey” of a broad corpus of PTSO projects, which allows for the identification of two main modes of digital integration. On the one hand, some pathways focus on basic digital literacy, emphasizing instrumental skills and the responsible use of technologies. On the other hand, more articulated projects emerge that incorporate advanced digital tools and languages- such as augmented and virtual reality, 3D modelling, digital storytelling, podcasting, and creative coding - embedding them more structurally within learning processes.
Rather than reflecting differences in technological availability alone, this polarization appears to be closely connected to broader pedagogical and organizational choices. In particular, the findings highlight the relevance of the curriculum–territory axis as a key interpretative lens for understanding patterns of digitalization within PTSO. Projects oriented toward advanced digital practices are more often embedded in territorial contexts characterized by dense educational networks and stronger collaboration between schools, universities, public institutions, and innovation-oriented actors. This configuration supports a closer alignment between curricular objectives, local needs, and the competences required in contemporary professional and civic contexts. Conversely, where the relationship with the territory is weaker or more strongly mediated by market actors, digital technologies tend to be used primarily in a functional and instrumental way, with more limited integration into pedagogical and assessment practices.
From this perspective, digital technologies do not operate as neutral tools, but rather as elements that amplify or constrain the educational potential of PTSO depending on institutional configurations, territorial partnerships, and professional cultures. More complex and longer-lasting projects appear to foster collaborative, reflective, and problem-oriented forms of learning, supporting the development of socio-emotional skills, decision-making capacities, and a sense of responsibility.
The contribution ultimately focuses on the “phygital learning” model as a key framework for interpreting the most advanced experiences. Understood as the intentional integration of physical and digital dimensions, phygital learning makes it possible to move beyond an instrumental view of technology and to promote immersive, participatory, and situated learning environments. Within this framework, digitally enriched PTSO can be interpreted as pedagogical devices capable of enhancing student empowerment and of contributing to the formation of subjects able to exercise critical and responsible agency within social, institutional, and territorial contexts, thus bringing educational practices closer to the challenges of contemporary democracy.

In recent years, universities have increasingly been called upon to rethink their teaching practices in innovative ways, not only to enhance the effectiveness of learning processes, but also to foster the acquisition of transversal competences and life skills that are crucial for active, critical, and responsible participation in social and professional life. Within this framework, innovative teaching is often presented as a lever capable of transforming the university experience into a space of engagement, collaboration, and democratic agency. However, empirical evidence on the relationship between innovative teaching practices, competence acquisition, and the quality of student participation remains fragmented and uneven, particularly when differences across disciplinary contexts and student profiles are taken into account.

This contribution presents the results of a quantitative pilot study, complemented by a qualitative research phase currently underway, aimed at analysing the relationship between experiences of innovative teaching and the acquisition and consolidation of soft and life skills among students enrolled in Master’s degree programmes at Sapienza University of Rome. The data derive from a web-based survey conducted during the academic year 2024-2025 on a sample of just under 300 students, attending degree programmes belonging to different scientific and disciplinary areas.

The questionnaire explored a wide range of dimensions, including: the value attributed to university education; motivations, needs, and expectations regarding training and competence acquisition; patterns and styles of engagement with university life; the intensity and quality of relationships established within the academic environment; the evaluation of the effectiveness of innovative teaching practices in fostering skills and competences, with particular attention to life skills; critical aspects and strengths of the educational pathway; and future professional and relational prospects. On the basis of the collected data, specific empirical indices were constructed to capture students’ exposure to innovative teaching practices, including: the use of digital platforms by lecturers in managing teaching activities; the adoption of innovative teaching methods in the classroom; the use of innovative assessment practices; the valorisation of practical and applied dimensions of teaching; the use of advanced digital technologies; and participation in group work and project-based activities.

The analysis makes it possible to explore to what extent, and under which conditions, exposure to such practices is associated with a more effective and potentially more durable acquisition of soft and life skills, while taking into account differences across disciplinary areas and student profiles (including attendance patterns, study progress, residential status, and socio-demographic characteristics). Particular attention is devoted to the dimension of equity, questioning whether innovative teaching practices contribute to broadening opportunities for participation and engagement, or whether they risk reproducing pre-existing inequalities.

The contribution aims to provide empirical evidence to discuss whether and how innovative teaching can effectively function as a lever for the development of life skills and for the construction of the university as a “living ecosystem of democracy in action”, going beyond a conception of innovation that reduces it to the mere adoption of tools or methodologies, and instead assessing its concrete effects in terms of competences, participation, and equity.

This contribution aims to present an innovative, laboratory‑based teaching approach dedicated to the development of an evaluation report for a public event. This approach was adopted on the occasion of a third mission event promoted by the University of Rome Foro Italico and addressed to the local territory as well as to the University’s academic, technical‑administrative and student communities: the Uniforoitalico Sport Day – Christmas Edition, held on 13 December 2025. For this event, a workshop was designed in which students were able to learn and apply methodological tools through a direct experience in a real‑world context. In line with the perspective of situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991), the entire process was developed with a dual objective: to evaluate the event and to design public engagement strategies for future editions, including in terms of the University’s Third Mission.

To set up the workshop, a call for thesis projects was launched, followed by a preliminary training session addressed to students who had decided to undertake the activity. Subsequently, thanks to a call promoted by the University, additional students joined the group on a voluntary basis. This openness contributed to strengthening the collaborative and inclusive dimension of the experience.

The preparatory phase represented a crucial moment of the educational process. In collaboration with the lecturers, students designed the satisfaction questionnaire—which was later implemented online—and created a QR code to facilitate completion during the event. At the same time, they developed the necessary skills to conduct interviews and video‑interviews in compliance with ethical and privacy principles: they produced informational materials, prepared consent forms, examined the regulations on privacy and the use of images, and translated regulatory indications into operational procedures (for example, particular attention to minors and the possibility of collecting testimonies without filming). This process fostered the development of ethical awareness, responsible communication and relational management—essential competencies for social research and aligned with life skills and transversal competences.

The students also worked with creative methods (Giorgi, Pizzolati, Vacchelli, 2021), including: a large racket‑shaped board, specifically constructed for the event, on which participants could express emotions and perceptions via post‑it notes, prompted by the statement “The Uniforoitalico Christmas Day is…”; and a suggestion and opinion‑polarisation box, decorated with hand‑drawn illustrations representing positive and negative feelings, designed to facilitate the expression of participants’ sentiment.

At the same time, the video‑interviews, combined with extracts from the board and the suggestion box, will constitute the basis for the creation of an emotional video aimed both at promoting the event and at building a narrative device oriented towards public engagement.

Taken as a whole, the activities activated the experiential learning cycle (Kolb, 1984), enabling students to understand how data collected through heterogeneous tools can guide decisions for event improvement (Guerzoni, 2006). The constant presence of lecturers in coordinating the data collection further reinforced the experience as a genuine exercise in situated learning, transforming the event into a teaching laboratory capable of transmitting both academic and transversal competences.

European education policies in recent decades have assigned universities a central role in the development of cognitive, relational and emotional skills, promoting innovative teaching and the digitalisation of learning environments as strategic levers for the training of active and responsible citizens.

In the context of transformations in higher education, life skills are fundamental tools for promoting student participation, critical thinking and democratic agency. However, innovative practices are also subject to organisational constraints, structural inequalities and relational tensions that can limit their inclusive potential. In this scenario, universities emerge as systems of social innovation and privileged contexts for observing the processes of change that affect the biographical trajectories of the younger generations.

This study forms part of a broader multi-method research project on innovative teaching in master’s and single-cycle courses at Sapienza University of Rome. An initial quantitative phase identified 11 degree courses that, as perceived by students themselves, stand out for their effectiveness in implementing innovative teaching practices. Drawing on this selection, a qualitative phase was launched and is currently underway, involving semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in the final years of master’s and single-cycle degree programmes. The narratives explore expectations and experiences relating to collaborative and laboratory teaching practices, the use of digital technologies and artificial intelligence tools, relational climate and group dynamics, and students’ perceived preparedness for the transition to the world of work.

Taking the students’ point of view, the analysis interprets the experience of innovative teaching as a practice situated in physical and digital learning spaces. The ability to actively participate in educational processes, exercise critical judgement and influence educational dynamics is seen as a concrete expression of democratic agency. The aim is to discuss, in light of the narratives collected, the opportunities offered by educational innovation in the development of transversal skills and collaborative environments, as well as the institutional and contextual factors that can hinder its effectiveness – in terms of organisational overload, heterogeneity of profiles or lack of support – thus contributing to ongoing debates on the university as an ecosystem of democracy in action.

The reorganization of teaching practices during the Covid-19 pandemic, with the systematic introduction of digital teaching, broke new ground in novel ways of conceiving educational pathways and, above all, interpreting competence acquisition. Within this context, digital teaching can be conceived as a laboratory for methodological innovation (Faggiano et al., 2024; Fasanella et al., 2025) that made visible, and in some cases, contributed to fostering more autonomous and reflective forms of learning management among students.

Building on insights from the research project La Valutazione d’impatto sociale della didattica digitale dopo il Covid-19 (Lo Presti & Dentale, 2025), this contribution adopts the students’ perspective to examine the experiential dimension of the perceived development of life skills across its cognitive, relational and socio-emotional domains. The perceptions of such development are interpreted through the lens of self-directed learning processes (Knowles, 1975; Candy, 1991; Garrison, 1997; Bruni & Isidori, 2019), through which students engage in orienting, monitoring and critically reflecting upon their educational experience, taking an active role in regulating their goals and strategies.

The integrated analysis of the self-assessment rubrics and transcripts of focus groups that involved them enabled an a posteriori reconstruction of the dynamics through which participants attributed meaning and narrated their own development. From this perspective, skills development is understood as a meaning-making process that takes shape in students’ lived experiences and reflections. Framed within a lifelong learning perspective, understood as transformative and biographical continuity (Jarvis, 2006; Candy, 1991), this development is configured as a situated dynamic that places students at the center of their own educational trajectory.

Following Biesta (2006), who conceives education as a space for activating agency, self-directed learning can be understood as one of the ways through which this agency manifests itself in the formative experience. The ability to consciously steer one’s learning pathway, make autonomous decisions and critically reflect on one's own learning trajectory represents an essential condition for the reflective and responsible exercise of democratic agency (Biesta, 2006). Life skills thus emerge not merely as simple functional acquisitions, but as outcomes of reflective and self-directed processes through which students gradually recognize themselves as co-constructors of their own knowledge pathways.

Drawing on the findings of the research project “La Valutazione d’impatto sociale della didattica digitale dopo il Covid-19” (Lo Presti & Dentale, 2025), this contribution examines the different teaching styles - that emerged across the educational contexts investigated - and explores how such pedagogical configurations may be associated with differentiated trajectories in the development of students’ cognitive, relational, and socio-emotional competences. The analysis is grounded in a comparative examination of data collected across the various educational contexts involved in the study, which enabled the identification of recurring and differentiated didactic arrangements. Focusing on teaching styles makes it possible to reconstruct how the methodological component of didactic innovation took shape in hybrid and uneven forms, bringing transmissive, integrated, and dialogical approaches into tension, with differentiated implications for students’ opportunities for engagement and activation (Lo Presti et al., 2025).

The study is framed within a lifelong learning perspective (Field, 2006), understood as attention to competence development processes along educational pathways and to learning trajectories that unfold across heterogeneous educational contexts (Lo Presti, 2017). Within this framework, the experience of distance learning is treated as a transversal context that cuts across different levels of the educational system, making it possible to observe the emergence, renegotiation, and differentiation of multiple didactic practices (Faggiano & Fasanella, 2022; Fasanella et al., 2020). Adopting a situated perspective, the study analyses the ways in which life skills (Faggiano et al., 2024; OECD, 2015) and forms of democratic agency (Biesta, 2010) manifest themselves in relation to pedagogical styles, assessment practices, and relational settings, highlighting how such configurations translate into differentiated processes of competence activation and enactment.
From this perspective, didactic innovation is not conceived as mere technological modernisation, but as the reconfiguration of pedagogical practices, assessment processes, and relational settings which, within differentiated institutional and cultural contexts, define the conditions of possibility for the activation and enactment of cognitive, relational, and socio-emotional competences. In this sense, it may foster the development of life skills and contribute to creating the conditions for the exercise of democratic agency (Biesta, 2010).

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) is an important innovation within the field of education that takes learning beyond traditional methods to provide students with authentic challenges and equips them with skills that they will use in their future careers. With its emphasis on critical thinking, collaboration and communication, CBL also provides valuable transversal skills that can be used in a wide range of situations and work settings such as to complement the specific skills and knowledge required to solve a specific challenge” (Dikilitas et al, 2025). Enacting this perspective, this paper reflects on the implementation of CBL within university programs, specifically focusing on Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs) and courses conducted at the School of Innovation (SOI) since 2020. These courses are designed to equip students with transdisciplinary tools to address the European Union’s most pressing challenges—Inclusion, Diversity, and Sustainability—through a proactive, future-oriented approach (Poli, 2021).

By discussing the social and community impacts of this pedagogical innovation, the authors present outcomes from programs designed to strengthen younger generations' reflection on the community impact of global socio-political transitions. Our core contribution is to propose CBL as a ‘catalyst’ for social innovation, guiding students and teachers toward a resilient approach to current economic and technological transformations. In these innovative programs, educators can teach young people to view the future as a "tool for emancipation" (Appaduraj, 2013) and develop a sense of democratic agency regarding unforeseen alternatives. To develop these anticipatory skills, students must build confidence in their ability to engage with knowledge (Engstrom, 1994) and address the social aspects of learning, such as cooperation and the negotiation of meanings and study practices. Through CBL group practices, students also learn to navigate cultural differences in communication and teamwork, improving their civic attitudes and relational skills.

Furthermore, implementing CBL requires active societal engagement from both students and teachers, demanding a shift in attitude toward knowledge creation processes and circulation. This effort is essential when involving external stakeholders—such as NGOs and local companies— in their projects and is at the heart of effective global collaboration (Jongbloed, 2023). Ultimately, introducing CBL in university curricula generates impacts that transcend the academic community (Kazemier et al., 2021), fostering a generation of "transdisciplinary social entrepreneurs" capable of navigating complex socio-political crises with empathy and democratic agency.