What is the ENLIGHT Competence Framework?

In the coming decades, certain societal challenges will transform the labour market, education and our everyday lives. These challenges cut across topics related to health, digital revolution, climate change, energy, equity and creativity. We have framed these challenges as part of our ENLIGHT flagship domains. Therefore, in all ENLIGHT courses and programmes, students engage with topics within these flagship domains. At the core of these educational initiatives is the intent to support students in developing certain competences.

The following figure depicts the ENLIGHT Competence Framework that forms the base of all educational initiatives within ENLIGHT. The heart of the figure represents real-world 21^st century challenges that need our urgent attention. Moving outwards, these challenges can be categorized further into themes such as equity, health, energy, digitalisation, climate change and creativity as visualised in the second circle. To counter these challenges, the next outward circle depicts our educational response of implementing approaches such as transdisciplinarity, collaboration, research-oriented education, intercultural and international learning, versatility and challenge-based education. The last circle represents the generic competences that students develop as a result of implementing these educational initiatives (adapted from OECD’s 21st century skills).

Hover over the figure to read detailed explanations on each of the competences.

This competence framework is designed to be adaptable across various learning formats. Through the Stepping Stones approach, ENLIGHT brings the framework to life in a variety of international learning experiences - some delivered on-campus, others online, and some through blended setups that combine both. Some learning experiences are collaboratively designed by ENLIGHT universities, while others are drawn from existing offerings made available across the network. Many reflect ENLIGHT’s educational vision, feature ENLIGHT flagships and focus on developing students’ generic competencies.

Inspiration can be found on the ENLIGHT Courses webpage, which highlights courses specifically designed to target ENLIGHT students. In addition, ENLIGHT universities list their existing courses on the ENLIGHT Course Catalogue to expand access and foster collaboration across the network.

We encourage lecturers and course designers to use the ENLIGHT Competence Framework while creating new ENLIGHT courses and programmes, but also to be inspired while designing and improving their existing courses. ENLIGHT universities are guaranteeing the quality of their education offer by means of a performant quality assurance system. All quality assurance systems are compliant with the European Standards and Guidelines and are inspired by the ESG’s underlying principles and concepts.