Five UG lecturers receive Comenius grants

Five UG lecturers are to receive Comenius grants. These grants provide educational professionals with the opportunity to put their teaching innovation ideas into practice. The awardees are as follows:

Leadership Fellows

Prof. dr. Jan Riezebos (FEB)

Creating value of student diversity through logistical innovations.

Student diversity is the norm rather than the exception in teaching nowadays. Diversity should bring value to the learning process of all students. However, research indicates that it requires careful planning of lecturers to develop diversity into a valuable asset in the learning process of students. If poorly managed, diversity may result in tensions and reinforcement of prejudices among students. To make value of diversity, lecturers need both technological and pedagogical training and support. This project offers technological support for, a.o., inclusive group work through educational logistics, while pedagogical support is offered through inclusiveness trainings.

Senior Fellows

dr. Oksana Kavatsyuk (UCG)

Let’s WeBWork together: collaboration between faculty and students for successful blended/hybrid learning

Blended-learning tools are not automatically sufficient for the students’ study success. Educational design that facilitates community building and collaboration between students is vital. We have developed a comprehensive strategy, encouraging community building and collaboration between students, aiming to humanize the online/hybrid courses, through building of trust, presence, awareness and empathy. Easy to follow step-by-step guide-lines for teachers will be produced, including a project website, instructions and instructional videos on humanizing (online/hybrid) courses and using WeBWork Open-Source platform for assignments. Students will be involved as co-creators and testers, gaining unique programming, communication and management experience.

Teaching Fellows

dr. M.H. Lee (FSE)

Developing a Framework to Optimize Existing Curricula for Hybrid Instruction

Many students attend university to study STEM fields, but may not be able to afford tuition and boarding without having a job at the same time. Given the recent increases in undergraduate students enrolling in those studies, which often have large introductory courses that lack the physical space to accommodate them during lectures and tutorials, universities need to reconsider how those courses are organized; one solution is hybrid education. Our project proposes the development of a framework, based on research of effective teaching practices, that instructors can use to adapt their existing curricula for hybrid instruction.

dr. Gerd Weitkamp (FSS)

Measuring and Imagining Spatial Design: integrating geospatial measurements and virtual realities to support spatial skills of students in collaborative spatial planning and design.

Complex spatial problems in urban areas require the integration of knowledge from different perspectives to make informed urban design decisions. In this project we develop a teaching module including a Geospatialreality toolset, that enables the use of spatial data for designing an urban area informed by quantitative measurements of spatial features and subjective experiences in a Virtual Reality environment. The toolset will be interactive and dynamic: changes in the design will affect the quantitative measurements and the experience in VR. The module will learn how to create a design with iterative and collaborative methods, enabling a transdisciplinary approach.

dr. Audrey Rousse-Malpat (Arts)

A multilingual approach for students from a broad language program

As a language student, you probably recognize this problem: you want to major in French but most of the courses in your language program are offered in English. Yet, you are supposed to reach a high level in French during your bachelor's degree. This project aims to help you by offering a multilingual course in which you learn to understand each other's languages and cultural points of view, while you continue to develop the French language through strategies such as language comparison, interpretation and mutual understanding. A premiere in a university!