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Teaching

General information

At the end of the 1990s, Utrecht University introduced a qualification structure for research and education so as to achieve a better balance between education and research in terms of careers and valuation. This policy, new to the Netherlands, gave a boost to the development of lecturer professionalisation. Various other universities also developed teaching qualifications and nearly all universities offered training programmes used mainly by beginning lecturers to train for teaching duties.

The need for support, supervision and training was not new, but ending the voluntary and non-committal nature of such training was. Training and development were linked to teaching qualifications that lecturers had to obtain and that were also tested. In 2006, six universities took the initiative to set up a national framework for these teaching qualifications, resulting two years later in nationwide mutual recognition of the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) among all Dutch universities.

University Teaching Qualification (UTQ)

The University Teaching Qualification (UTQ or in Dutch, BKO) is a proof of pedagogic competence for teachers in academic education. All employees who teach courses at the University of Groningen are required to obtain this qualification. As it is a national requirement, lecturers with the UTQ certificate are considered to be qualified for academic teaching by fourteen Dutch research universities.

Senior Teaching Qualification (STQ)

The Senior Teaching Qualification programme (STQ) is characterized by content-related meetings on strategic education-related themes. Furthermore, the programme involves interaction with experts within the UG and elsewhere and peer feedback sessions on participants’ own improvement projects.

Teaching skills

Educational Support and Innovation (ESI) Educational Staff Development section enables current lecturers and other University staff to improve their professional skills via workshops, courses, open days and tailored activities. Their target groups include lecturers, PhD students, student assistants, faculties and departments.

Teaching programs

Teaching and examination regulations (TER/OER in Dutch) are determined for each program or group of programs at every faculty of the University of Groningen.

Contact your (future) faculty educational committee or programme committee if you have questions about the teaching programs.

Digital what & how

At the UG different programs are used for online education environments, schedules, course information, and registration for modules and examination.

At the moment, the UG uses Nestor as an online education environment, but this will be replaced by Brightspace.

You can check, explore and create (own) schedules on the Rooster-site, which is also implemented as a time table in Nestor.

Ocasys (Education Catalog System) is a web application to keep track of faculty subject and study program data.

Via ProgressWWW students can enroll themselves for courses, which have been created by teachers in Nestor. Here can also the examination results be found.

Dutch Grading System

In the Netherlands, grades are given on an absolute basis. Results of exams will hardly ever be adjusted to a curve, because we do not use a comparative system for grading. The grading scale ranges from 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest possible mark (hardly ever given) and 6 being the passing grade.

Last modified:06 March 2024 5.08 p.m.