Our Teaching Methods

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Experiential Education

Many colleges around the world take up the notion of ‘problem-based learning’, and this is an exciting development. However at UCG we go a step further, focusing on experiential education.

Experiential education recognises the importance of active and deep learning. Experiential learning encourages students to put their existing knowledge and experience to work, pulling in new knowledge when and where it is needed the most. Passive and superficial learning focused on memorising facts have no place in experiential learning.

Experiential learning calls for the unique methods of teaching and learning described in this section.

Interactive and Small-scale Learning Environments

We want our students to integrate and further develop knowledge, rather than just store it. Our small-skale, interactive classes foster an engaging environment where you activley participate in discussions, critical writing, and presentations. This approach helps you to develop strong critical thinking skills while encouraging you to integrate exisitng knowledge with new insights.

Small-scale and interactive classrooms also provide a safe and stimulating environment for taking risks, exploring, and helping students make received knowledge their own. At UCG, we acknwledge that students come with a rich background of experiences, ideas, and knowledge. In our classrooms, we encourage students to test their instincts and intuitions, and to update and integrate what they already know with new insights.

Focus on Societal Issues

All knowledge is ultimately meant to be used, and students learn most effectively when knowledge is presented in the context in which it is used.

UCG affords students and teachers the opportunity to apply knowledge to complex real-world situations. Further, we recognize that it is the ethical responsibility of the scientist to operate in the world.

Interdisciplinarity

The 21st century’s complex situations—like the energy transition, the refugee crisis, or the future of capitalism—cannot be addressed by a single discipline.

Our vision is to give our students both specialized expertise and a broad interdisciplinary perspective. For this, we aim to turn classrooms into laboratories: spaces where students and teachers work across disciplines to diagnose and provide solutions to these complex problems.

In the Liberal Arts and Sciences programme at UCG we embrace interdisciplinarity across our courses and project curricula. Our approach includes grafting genuiney interdisciplinary courses, such as our Core Electives, that encourage you to explore connections between different fields of study, enriching your academic experience. Our goal is for our graduates to be uniquely positioned to participate in, and lead, the interdisciplinary teams tackling the issues of tomorrow.

Core Electives

At UCG, you'll have the chance to explore a wide variety of subjects through our interdisciplinary Core Electives. Check out the videos below to get a glimps of what our Core Electives offer and see how they can shape your academic journey!

Culture: The Building Blocks

This course offers an introduction into the basic elements of human culture, including the distinguishing features of human culture and the evolution and development of cultural behaviour in humans. Topics discussed include imagination, artifacts, language, and cultural consciousness.

Disease

In your daily life you will be confronted with major health problems of our time, either in your direct environment or via news media. The course will address a number of compelling questions (such as “what factors contribute to health and disease?”; “Is there a relation between human evolution and cancer?”; and “what are the biggest threats to our health nowadays?”) using different perspectives. Besides analyzing the most important biological mechanisms related to a “healthy status” and behind major health issues, we are also going to discuss health and disease from a population health perspective as well as from an evolutionary point of view. All under the light of scientific evidence, of course.

This is the Sea

The ocean covers more than 70% of earth's surface and is a fundamental reason why life exists on earth – but much of it remains unexplored and under-appreciated. The course 'This is the Sea' offers an interdisciplinary approach to understanding cultural and scientific aspects of the sea. Students will understand the role of the sea in climate change and they will learn how to protect the ocean and the planet. Topics discussed include cultural history of the sea, life in the ocean, politics of the sea, blue economy, ocean policy and economics.

How Things Work

The course 'How Things Work' is a good introduction to Smart Technologies. Throughout, it focuses on real life applications of fundamental principles. At the end of the course students are able to recognise the physics principles involved the complex technology of the Modern World, as well as apply the laws of physics in an interdisciplinary setting.

People, Place, and Culture

The course 'People, Place, and Culture' introduces thinking “geographically”: understanding, interpreting, and representing the human world in ways that emphasize spatial relations, spatial processes, and relationships to the physical space around us. By the end of the course, students will be able to think critically about and explain some ways that “geography matters” in terms of the dynamic flows of international relations, cultures, politics and economies and the people and institutions involved. The course promotes the development of a geographical imagination capable of addressing global, national, regional and local challenges.

War

This course explores war from multiple perspectives. We are concerned with how war is defined, its nature and prevalence, as well as different types of warfare. We examine how law attempts to regulate warfare and explore how the dynamics of wars result in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Probing deeper into the nature of these crimes, we study both the cause (for instance the extreme methods of military training that turn recruits into torturers) and the effect (on victims).

We will also study methods to fight these types of crimes and the legal obligation of the international community to do so even when political will might be lacking as well as consider the after-effects of war. A special focus is placed on the Islamic State and the link between extremism, war and terrorism.

Love

The concept of "love" is found in all cultures and is expressed in music, poetry, films, advertisements, mobile applications and many other human activities, products and customs. Love is also portrayed as one of the strongest feelings one can experience. But, what is Love? In this interdisciplinary course, Philosophy, Biology and Psychology are combined to achieve a nuanced understanding of what Love is and how it is experienced and expressed by humans. We address questions such as: Are there different types of love?; Is love an act of free will?; Do we choose who to fall in love with? and Can love hurt? We treat these as complex questions that would benefit from a conversation across disciplines.