BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

One way to gain a new perspective and inspiration for one's teaching practice is to go on a teaching sabbatical and teach or co-teach in a new context at another institution. Awarding or sending faculty on sabbaticals is an old practice and, at some institutions, a well-integrated part of faculty development (Kang & Miller, 1999).

WORK DONE

All authors have been fortunate to go on teaching sabbaticals funded by The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT,2025). Emma Riese was at Arizona State University 2024; Ric Glassey at the National University of Singapore 2023; Tomas Ekholm at Williams College 2019; Olle Bälter at Williams College 2008; Viggo Kann at Amherst College 2006; all in the fall semester.

LESSONS LEARNED

Going on a teaching sabbatical gave us all new perspectives and time to reflect. While moving to another country requires planning and determination, we all agree that it was definitely worth it! The experiences have broadened our perspectives, shaped us, and influenced our practices. Below are short descriptions of our journeys:

Viggo started to do research in Computer Science Education, and implemented several changes at KTH inspired by Amherst College. For example he changed the KTH cultureof not erasing the blackboard after each lecture, and he switched to holding one-hourinstead of two-hour lectures (Kann, 2010).

Olle changed his research area to Technology Enhanced Learning. Together with Viggo,they founded Cerise 1 , the CS Education research group. The sabbatical was a determining factor for the visiting scholarship at Stanford Graduate School of Education 2015-16. There he picked up the ideas on Question-Based Learning, later improved together with Ric to pure Question-Based Learning (Bälter et al., 2024).

Ric used the sabbatical to dive into learning science and the desirable and undesirable difficulties in learning. He was also able to reflect on other approaches to managing scale and quality against the rise of Gen-AI. This has led to a series of studies on how KTH might leverage AI to enhance our learning environment (e.g. Fayaz et al., 2025).

Emma’s biggest takeaway was how working as a teaching team created a supportive work environment for instructors and teaching assistants while ensuring students across all course sections got a similar student experience. She also had the opportunity to collaborate on training for teaching assistants (ASU, 2025).

Besides teaching a new course, Tomas took the opportunity to sit in on several courses with different teachers. It was a privilege to have time for this, while also having time to reflect.

TAKE-HOME MESSAGE

(1) Go on exchanges and teach! If you can, bring the rest of the family; it is a wonderful adventure. (2) There is much more to a teaching sabbatical than teaching! Reach out to the local pedagogical developers and engage to help further develop your own pedagogy. (3) It is an opportunity to say ‘yes’; to all the serendipitous meetings, seminars, and workshops that are a ‘no’ under the normal workload at home. (4) Absence makes the heart grow fonder! The grass may not be greener on the other side; however, having some distance from your typical environment can make you appreciate what you have and renew your efforts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, STINT, for funding our teaching sabbaticals!

REFERENCES

Arizona State University, Ira Fulton Schools of Engineering, Learning and Teaching Hub,Teaching Assistants onboarding and beyond, URL: https://lth.engineering.asu.edu/referenceguide/teaching-assistants-onboarding-and-beyond/

Bälter, O., Glassey, R., Jemstedt, A., & Bosk, D. (2024). Pure Question-Based Learning.Education Sciences, 14(8). https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14080882

Kann, V. (2010). Kan kvalitet på ett elitcollege föras över till svenska förhållanden? NU 2010.URL: https://suhf.se/static/2010/2010/konferensbidrag/Pass5_Kan_kvalitet_pa_ett_elitcollege_foras_over_till_svenska_forhallanden.pdf

Kang, B., & Miller, M. T. (1999). An Overview of the Sabbatical Leave in Higher Education: A Synopsis of the Literature Base.

The Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, STINT, Teaching sabbatical, URL: https://www.stint.se/en/program/teaching-sabbatical

Avid Fayaz, Richard Glassey and Alexander Baltatzis. 2025. Generating Personalized Assignments with Students in the Loop. In Proceedings of the 2025 on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2025).