CYGNA: Weaving the Threads: experience, tools and networks for teaching in today’s world

Reports on our 70th CYGNA meeting - organised by our Teaching & Scholarship CYG

Ciara O’Higgins - (updated Thu 2 Apr 2026 08:17)

Our 70th meeting was organised and hosted by Jane Neal-Smith and Ciara O'Higgins, who convened a panel of no less than thirteen brilliant and very engaging CYGNA members working in six different countries (and originating from many more) who shared wealth of knowledge in teaching in today's world.

We have had a thriving CYG-TSR (Special Interest Group on Teaching & Scholarship Research) for a while, but this was our first plenary meeting on teaching. It was clear the topic was of great interest to our CYGNA members. We had a record 46 participants coming from all over the world, 42 of which can be found in the above group picture.

As always in our CYGNA meetings, the time flew by and we could easily have filled another hour. The chat was overflowing with discussions and suggestions and there were hundreds of thumbs ups, hearts, and smiles of recognition.

You can find a full Event flyer here. The 2-hour session was made up of three panels focusing around core topics with 4-5 panelists each. It is impossible to do full justice to the wealth of experience that was shared in the session. You really had to be there! However, we have created a brief write-up below.

Panel 1: How much has the HE environment changed and how do we respond?

Panellists: Marie Therese Claes, Inge Hill, Susy Menis, Paula McIver Nottingham, Natalie Wilmot.

  • Do we need to rethink everything? What is still valid/useful and what is not?
  • Building resilience for teachers
  • Helping students build resilience for proactive learning
  • Building in safety nets for assessment
  • Diversity in the student population - types of learning/international/neurodiverse/previous educational background

Our panelists offered many different, but complementary, perspectives on the current context and how it affects teaching.

Marie Therese opened this panel by setting the stage and advocating for organisations to rethink how they construct more resilient organisations and in particular universities, and highlighted that trust-based leadership and organisational learning are key.

Inge then shared how she has been developing her teaching around three axes: how to adapt to the digital transformation of teaching and learning, how to be more student centred and shift towards skills-based teaching, and how to develop green skills, i.e. incorporate sustainable development into teaching across the board.

Susy then shared a fascinating experience about teaching essay writing and the role AI plays in this context. “Bringing AI into a course isn’t just about rethinking evaluation; you have to rethink the whole course design”.

Paula inspired us all with a series of images that represented her teaching experience in a powerful and intimate manner.

Natalie closed this panel by highlighting that teaching can take an emotional toll, and inviting us both individually and institutionally to think about how to build resilience for teaching through communities of practice to normalise and learn from one another, mentoring and strengthening of teaching career pathways.

Panel 2: Teaching in today’s context

Panellists: Sarah Carnegie, Yonjoo Cho, Huong Nguyen, Siân Stephens.

  • Engaging students for proactive learning
  • Successful (realistic) teaching methodologies for student engagement & learning
  • Trends/themes and pop up ideas - i.e. sustainability
  • Attendance vs external sources - why should I bother?
  • Adding value in the classroom
  • Strategies for dealing with increasing student numbers

In this panel, a number of inspiring initiatives were shared of different strategies to engage students in this new and complex environment. Our panellist offered many great ideas to take away, and hopefully new connections will be made as CYGNA members connect among themselves to keep learning from one another.

First, Sarah shared her experience on work integrated learning activities and how they can help students discover their own values, take responsibility for their learning and enhance their employability. While recognising the risks and challenges she invited us all to consider this type of approach.

Building on these ideas and her extensive experience, Yonjoo took us through a SWOT analysis of project-based learning, including the opportunity to collaborate with diverse business organizations and community partners, to align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (the UN SDGs) and enhance social impact, while recognising the pedagogical challenges and extra effort required for such an approach.

Huong then shared her experience teaching students the skill of reflective writing as a bridge between their experience and employability. She shared how she guides students through a structured reflection and how this helps them develop their professional identity.

Finally, Siân stimulated a very active debate in the chat as she shared her thoughts and experience about student attendance and engagement. She challenged us to think about the dimension of connection that is created in the in-person classroom, both among students and with the teacher and how to build on that to make the in-person experience more enriching for learning.

Panel 3: Challenges and opportunities in using AI for teaching & learning

Panellists: Luísa Ferreira Pinto, Neha Pathak, Tatyana Tsukanova, Lyubomira Gramcheva

  • Challenges and benefits
  • Managing expectations for staff and students
  • Finding a common ground in assessments

As expected, this panel generated a heated debate, but at no point was it a simplified polarised discussion. On the contrary, it was rich with detail, caveats and subtleties allowing for a rich conversation.

Luísa started us off with a personal and honest story of how she explored the world of AI for her teaching and developed both the skills and the confidence to enhance her teaching and the learning experience of her students.

Neha shared the journey she and her team have travelled, experimenting, adjusting and improving their courses to adapt to the new realities of AI and student learning. In particular, she underlined the reflective process required to quickly identify where and when to course-correct.

Tatyana shared lessons from her work on Mind the Gap, a HES-SO-funded project that helps educators adapt their teaching to the GenAI era. She presented the opportunities and challenges identified through the project's focus groups and interviews, highlighting key educator needs, opportunities and concerns that inform the ongoing development of a prototype designed to support ethical and learning-centered GenAI integration in course redesign.

Lyuba then brought the reflection to a close by sharing her views on whether and how AI has improved or worsened students’ performance as well as on markers’ ability to detect GenAI use. She urged us to consider how critical thinking skills are built and how students exercise judgement.

Further discussion and teaching students how to use AI

As expected, during the panel, a lively debate ensued in the chat, covering questions around the ethics of AI use, the different ways in which universities are supporting educators and how we as educators can also lead by example declaring our own use of AI to enhance our teaching. Several of the participants also shared how they taught AI. We reproduce their reflections here for inspiration.

I am teaching the use of AI and instead of trying to avoid it I am integrating it as a reflective process. While doing this I go through the process with students teaching them why and how they should not use it as part of what they are doing in my module and many students suddenly get it. I avoid preaching that it's bad but showing based on practice how it works. I noticed many students do not know how the mechanics and processes of AI tools work and simply use it taken-for-granted but once I show them and we critically reflect together they develop a deep sense of scepticism.
I've been doing some seminars where I take a look with students at how I could use it to summarise an article to help me understand whether it is something I want to read in detail or not. I also show them some of how I have been trialing it with different tasks to see where it helpful or not. I often show them the errors it gives me when I ask it something and show them a bit how different GPTs will answer things and then I also talk about the sustainability and ethical issues from my perspective. And how it potentially reduces critical thinking and the answers you get depend on how you ask and iterate with your questioning.

GenAI resources

Related blogposts and other resources

Panelists bios (in alphabetical order)

  • Sarah Carnegie, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle University Business School

Sarah Carnegie is a Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University Business School. Sarah is the Director of Employability and also the Co-Director of Scholarship for the Business School. In this role, she has run an annual programme of scholarship activity including launching an in-house journal Scholarship Insights: Newcastle (SI:N). Her research interests include exploring student learning practices, work integrated and experiential learning, and graduate employability. Before joining the University, Sarah held a variety of consultancy roles, which included working with organisations in some very interesting locations, such as Bermuda, UAE, Romania and Ukraine helping them to improve their employee engagement strategies. Sarah is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Chartered Management and Business Educator.

  • Yonjoo Cho, Professor of HRD at the University of Texas at Tyler, USA.

Dr. Yonjoo Cho is a professor of HRD and HRD MS Program Coordinator at the University of Texas at Tyler, USA. Before joining academia in the United States, she worked in diverse organizations: a telecommunications company, a non-profit organization, and a business school in South Korea. She conducted a needs assessment of the current and ideal state of those organizations to take actions to bring in change. Based on her extensive work experiences, she has been teaching Needs Assessment in HRD since 2008 and has overseen more than 130 projects developed by student teams, working with clients in diverse contexts. Her article on the use of project-based learning in teaching the UN SDGs to prepare for responsible business leaders is under review in an academic journal. Her research topics include action learning in organizations, women in leadership, and international HRD. She was Editor-in-Chief of Human Resource Development Review (Impact Factor in 2023: 6.4) 2020-2023.

  • Marie Therese Claes, Professor of Intercultural Management at the Louvain School of Management, Belgium

Professor Emerita Marie-Therese Claes was Head of the Institute for Gender and Diversity at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business from 2000 to 2025. Previously she was CEMS professor Cross-Cultural Management and Leader of the CEMS interfaculty group for many years, and director of the Executive MBA programme at the Louvain School of Management (UCLouvain, Belgium). She was also Dean of the Faculty of Business at Asian University in Thailand and has been visiting professor at several universities in Europe, Asia and the USA, as well as consultant for international organizations. She is past president of SIETAR Europa (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research), and of EWMD (European Women Management Development Network). She is also president of IACCM (International Organisation for Intercultural Communication, Competence and Management), and Fulbright and Japan Foundation alumna. Prof. Claes is Associate Editor of GWO.

  • Lyubomira Gramcheva

Dr Lyubomira Gramcheva has taught Law of Contract and Business Law (including to business students) for 10 years in British universities. Her research interests lie at the intersection of contract law, comparative law and law and economics. Lyubomira has also developed a research interest in teaching and learning. She has published on effective feedback, developing self-regulated learners and AI in education. She is also an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Further and Higher Education. Her most recent project Evaluating ChatGPT’s Impact on Performance and Marking Practices in the Law School has been funded by the British Academy.

  • Inge Hill

Dr Inge Hill, SFHEA, is a values-led strategic leader and a pioneer in teaching innovations. With over 25 years’ experience, Inge holds several inter-/national teaching awards, including the 2020 Experienced Teaching Practitioner of the Year for an experiential learning intervention from the prestigious British Academy of Management. She is an international EntreComp Champion, an award for having changed enterprise education policy and practice inter-/nationally. Inge has published a well-received new venture creation textbook, the first by a European female sole-author translating her business experiences as consultant and starting her own businesses into actionable teaching materials (Hill, 2015). Inge is a Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University and an Associate Editor with Education + Training.

  • Luísa Ferreira Pinto, Associate Professor of International Human Resource Management at the University of Porto's Faculty of Economics, Portugal

Luísa Helena Pinto is an Associate Professor of International HRM at the University of Porto (FEP) and Director of the Master’s in Management. Her research focuses on global mobility and expatriation, including self-initiated expatriates and systemic barriers to international assignments. She is Associate Editor of the Journal of Global Mobility and supports evidence-based and responsible research (CEBMa; RRBM). A proud Cygna sister since 2019.

  • Dr Susanna Menis, Senior Lecturer in Law, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

PhD Lead; Programme Director (designer and convenor) Certificate HE Legal Studies; Module designer, convenor and lecturer (LLB, LLM, GDL Criminal Law; LLB Dissertation; LLB Legal Research and Writing; LLB Law Research and Policy); Deputy Chief Examiner (Criminal Law) London Undergraduate Laws Consortium; External Examiner Sussex University; Interim Committee of the Legal Humanities Association; Steering Committee of Birkbeck Centre of the Study of Law and the Humanities; Socio-Legal Studies Association Co-convenor stream: Criminal Law & Criminal Justice stream.

  • Huong Nguyen, Lecturer, Management/Human Resources Management, La Trobe University, Australia

Dr Huong Nguyen is a Lecturer in Management and Human Resource Management at La Trobe Business School, Australia. She teaches organisational change, recruitment, and leadership in diverse and international contexts. Huong redesigns large undergraduate subjects through flipped learning, scaffolded programmatic assessment, inclusive LMS architecture, and responsible AI integration to re-engage complex, multicultural cohorts. Her pedagogical work focuses on transforming classroom time into a space for guided meaning-making, where reflection supports professional identity formation and long-term employability. Her broader research examines leadership, careers, and diversity, exploring how institutional structures shape access, legitimacy, and progression across cultural contexts.

  • Paula McIver Nottingham, Associate Professor, Department of Education, Middlesex University, UK

Paula specialises in practice-based learning within Higher Education and organisational settings. She is currently an Associate Professor and PGR Lead for the HSCE/S&T Professional Doctorate at Middlesex University and works as a Consultant at the University for the Creative Arts focusing on technology enhanced learning and creative digital pedagogies. Paula uses visual imagery to communicate concepts and practice, and in this talk is focusing on how practitioner perspectives can engage with the philosophies of virtual learning within the ‘place and space’ discourse.

  • Neha Pathak, Senior Associate Dean, Hult International Business School, UK

Dr Neha Pathak is Senior Associate Dean at Hult International Business School, where she leads academic quality, faculty strategy, and curriculum innovation across the undergraduate programme. She also supports the integration of AI in teaching and assessment, working with faculty to explore tools and develop responsible practices.

She began her academic career in economics and statistics and holds a PhD in Economics and an MBA from Hult. Her research is interdisciplinary, focusing on leadership, marketing, and the application of AI in organisational and educational contexts.

Her case work and thought leadership have been featured in Harvard Business Impact and Thinkers50. She has presented at the Chartered Association of Business Schools and the British Academy of Management, and serves as Viva Chair for the DBA programme at Ashridge Executive Education, UK.

  • Siân Stephens, Senior Lecturer at UWS London Campus, UK

Siân is the Programme Leader for BA International Business at UWS London Campus and has taught international business and business ethics for over ten years. Her research focuses on the relationship between energy operations and their local communities, but she is keen to engage more in pedagogic work. In particular she is interested in how educators experience care and the way in which this impacts our teaching and our relationship to work.

  • Tatyana Tsukanova, Assistant Professor, EHL Hospitality Business School, HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western, Switzerland

Tatyana is an Assistant Professor at EHL Hospitality Business School, HES-SO, in Lausanne. Her research explores how entrepreneurs act under uncertainty, with a focus on technology, resilience, and ecosystems. She also works on emerging questions at the intersection of AI technologies and higher education, and is currently leading a project in this field: https://research.ehl.edu/funded-research-projects/ai-higher-education

  • Natalie Wilmot, Reader in International Business @The Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Natalie has taught across all levels from undergraduate to doctoral on a range of International Business and strategy modules. In addition to her appointments in the UK she also held a visiting position at the University of Bordeaux between 2017-2023. Her research interests focus on language diversity in international management, and she is currently leading a project at MMU on decolonization of the IB curriculum.

Co-hosts

  • Jane Neal-Smith, Reader in Management, School for Business and Society, University of York

Jane holds a PhD in Industrial Psychology from the University of Bradford, where her thesis examined the working lives of British women airline pilots. She is joint editor of ‘Absent Aviators’ published by Ashgate. Jane has worked in the field of management education for over 26 years in a variety of roles, she is a Senior Fellow of the HEA and is interested in creative pedagogy, aviation history and the gendering of occupations, human factors and organisational behaviour.

  • Ciara O’Higgins, Assistant professor in Strategy and International Business at Deusto Business School, University of Deusto, Spain.

Ciara teaches international strategy at undergraduate, graduate and executive levels, at the University of Deusto, a Spanish university with a strong teaching tradition. Her research focuses on firm internationalisation, in particular professional service firms. Prior to working at the University of Deusto she worked for close to 20 years in international business, promoting the internationalisation of firms and creating international networks and alliances. Having lived and worked in a number of countries, she is curious about all things multicultural and multilingual and seeks to continue applying and expanding her experience in this field to a variety of academic, social and corporate projects.

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Copyright © 2026 Ciara O’Higgins. All rights reserved. Page last modified on Thu 2 Apr 2026 08:17

Ciara O’Higgins is a lecturer in strategy and international business at Deusto Business School in the Basque Country, Spain. Her (qualitative) research focusses on the international professional service firms (PSFs) and in particular the role of knowledge in their internationalisation. Prior to working at the University of Deusto, she worked for close to 20 years in international business, promoting the internationalisation of firms (in particular service and tech-based firms) and collaborating in international and economic development projects with multilateral funding (EuropeAid, InterAmerican Development Bank etc.). Having lived and worked in a number of countries, she is curious about all things multicultural and multilingual and seeks to continue applying and expanding her experience in this field to a variety of academic, social and corporate projects.

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