SURF Onderwijsdagen 2026

As the Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e) we want to empower our students to take ownership of their learning (Self-Directed Learning) while preparing them to work across disciplines on complex societal challenges through our Challenge-Based Learning lines. An important pre-condition is that students can find and access our own knowledge sources, in real time. Currently, however, students are unable to access educational materials beyond the boundaries of their own courses.

What if students could explore the TU/e academic ecosystem as an interconnected network? To enable students to do this, TU/e is piloting GraphSearch, which transforms finding educational sources into an intuitive, AI-powered discovery experience. The tool connects educational learning materials, publications, concepts and people.

Digital Autonomy

In piloting GraphSearch, TU/e aims to work towards digital autonomy. GraphSearch is developed by another University: EPFL from Lausanne, Switzerland. They have made the source code available as open-source. It cannot be bought as an off the shelf tool. Instead, EPFL is adopting a partnership model through which universities are able to join efforts to finance and steer the direction of the tool, enabling us to create a platform tailored to our evolving needs.

The session

In this session, we will start off with a preview of GraphSearch, explaining how it works and how we are using it. We then address strategic and organizational questions many institutions face when adopting open-source educational innovation, such as: what does sustainable collaboration look like outside traditional supplier models? How do governance, support and institutional ownership evolve when universities co-develop educational infrastructure together?

Target audiences

This session is designed for educational innovators, learning designers, policy advisors, librarians and educational support professionals interested in creating more connected, open, student-centered, and future-proof learning ecosystems in higher education.

Take-aways

Attendees will leave with practical insights into:

• Supporting self-directed and challenge-based learning through smarter resource discovery;
• Unlocking educational content across courses with AI;
• Discovering how connected educational resources help students explore knowledge beyond the boundaries of a single course;
• Explore ways to make existing educational material more findable and accessible;
• Evaluating educational technology pilots in authentic learning environments
• Exploring collaborative, open and autonomous approaches to digital educational infrastructure.