We’re about to start the third and final day of the 2025 PAEE/ALE conference in Porto, Portugal.

It’s an annual meet up of Project Approaches in Engineering Education (PAEE), which has an active community of members particularly across Portuguese and Spanish speaking parts of the world, and Active Learning in Engineering (ALE), on whose Steering Committee I serve.

I’ve attended PAEE/ALE in San Sebastián, Spain, in 2015. And in Alicante, Spain (where I was a keynote speaker), in 2023. And in San Andreas Island, Columbia, in 2024.

It’s a small and energetic gathering—just the right size for getting to know people and have deeply meaningful chats and learning sessions.

At this year’s event, I chaired a session and delivered a paper on a bingo game I developed with Mike Murphy, Celina Pinto Leão, Mircea Toboșaru, and Mary Doddy Nolan. We decided to perfect the game during a workshop I delivered at the 2025 SEFI Ethics Spring Symposium that I hosted at TU Dublin, and to publish it for others to use. I’ll post materials once they are ready for wide-spread use.

The game is designed to help engineering educators expand the ways they conceptualize integrating ethics into the courses they teach. In the workshop, we explore integrating environmental and social sustainability, EDI, ethical theories and codes.

A day after the paper presentation, I ran a workshop with Inês Direito to test the game. The group shown below had such fun, and benefitted from having 90 minutes allocated to our workshop (thanks for that Diana Mesquita and team!).

I also had a chance to deliver, with Inês’ help, a workshop on securing international fellowships. This topic always gets a warm welcome from colleagues eager to learning about funding sources and tips for winning awards.

The PAEE/ALE 2025 keynotes have been outstanding (as usual with this conference)!

Keynote addresses by Xiangyun Du, the local teaching excellence center, and Jamie Gurganus were packed intriguing insights.

Reconnecting with ALE Steering colleagues Miguel Roma, Valquiria Villas-Boas, and Jens Myrup Pedersen, (and Fernando Rodriguez and Luciano Soares who didn’t get to join us this year) is always a pleasure.

PAEE/ALE has been a highlight of my academic year the past few years.

Many, many thanks to this year’s host, the knowledgeable and vivacious Diana Mesquita, and the PAEE leadership including Rui Lima, for making the 2025 event possible.

If you’re interested in Active Learning pedagogies, consider joining us next year for the 2026 conference in Japan!