Comenius Teaching Fellow grant for Druetta and Van Benthem and Hackl

Dr. Pablo Druetta of the Engineering and Technology Institute Groningen ( ENTEG ) and Dr. Koen van Benthem and Dr. Thomas Hackl of the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences ( GELIFES ) have received a Comenius Teaching Fellow grant from the NRO (‘Nationaal Regieorgaan Onderwijsonderzoek’). Druetta will receive EUR 50,000 for his project 'Improving the teaching of computational fluid dynamics courses in lecture rooms by means of virtual reality tools'. Van Benthem and Hackl receive the same amount for their project 'Teaching coding effectively through interactive formative assessments'.

Dr. Pablo Druetta (ENTEG) | ‘Improving the teaching of computational fluid dynamics courses in lecture rooms by means of virtual reality tools’

Engineering students usually ask themselves these questions, while following any simulation course: why are the 2D images so small in the screen; and why is the lecturer showing a view, which is not helpful for your learning process. Though current CFD software have clearly improved the rendering and post-processing, this is not clear to see for all students in the same classroom. This project aims to tackle this problem by developing a virtual reality (VR) framework, which will help students to avoid asking these questions. Students then will be immersed in the same common environment and will be capable to have the same perspective, interacting and becoming active members of the learning process. Students will be able to follow the instructions by having a clear vision of, for instance, the fluid velocity field around a wind turbine. There is significant potential in extending this framework to other engineering-related courses, in which the visualization can be improved by VR tools.

Dr. Koen van Benthem and Dr. Thomas Hackl (GELIFES) | ‘Teaching coding effectively through interactive formative assessments’

This project will provide a platform to students in the biostatistics courses where they can submit solution scripts. Upon submission, the platform will provide immediate automated individual feedback to the student. This will allow students to improve their analysis through multiple rounds of feedback, independent of teacher availability. Furthermore, it will allow teachers to adjust the course in real-time based on an analysis of the submitted scripts and associated feedback.

Comenius Programme

The Comenius programme contributes to the innovation and improvement of higher education in the Netherlands. The programme consists of three types of grants: ‘Teaching Fellow’, ‘Senior Fellow’ and ‘Leadership Fellow’. The grants enable education professionals to put their ideas for educational innovation into practice.