Teachers share tips and tricks at the Education Showcase
But how do you do it? At the annual Education Showcase, lecturers at the Faculty of Humanities could talk to their colleagues about teaching methods and teaching. Plenty of tips were exchanged during the information fair, workshops and drinks. Five participants talk about they learned.
Enrico Odelli, lecturer in Italian
'I am actually on sabbatical, but I came back especially for the Education Showcase. I believe it’s an essential part of my profession to keep my education up to date and get in touch with colleagues who have gained experience with new projects. Since I deal with Italian, speaking, interaction and debating, I went to Liesbet Winkelmolen's presentation on debating during lectures. I already knew about the project, but now I was able to delve into the details even more. I also found it interesting to see how Jaap de Jong presented the portfolio, as I once worked with a different form of it myself. It's inspiring to see how it prepares students for the job market.'
Kirsten Penders, coordinator Honours College LawCollege Law
'I'm not actually a humanities student at all, I work at the Honours College Law. I come here to check things out. We would also like to organise a conference like this for our lecturers, because there are lots of great, innovative things happening in education, but we don't know what each other is doing. Here, for example, I found it very interesting to hear about podcasting, also as a form of testing. At the moment, seventy to eighty per cent of our courses end with an essay, so it would be cool to broaden that with another form that is really new for students. I’m hoping to meet more people today. Maybe then they can come and speak at our conference as well.'
Elise Bouman, educational project leader
'I started at the faculty in mid-April, and my aim is to strengthen the position of languages. For example, we want to have more outreach to secondary schools. At the Education Showcase, I heard about podcasts and vlogs. They’re tools that we could use to open up the knowledge from that language domain more. I think it’s especially useful that you suddenly get tosee what is already there and what we are already doing. I can get really enthusiastic about that.'
Susana Valdes, university lecturer in translation
‘The fair is useful for me to see what my colleagues have been doing. There’s not much opportunity during classes to understand all of the innovation that’s going on around us, but here we can really get inspired. I’m giving a presentation myself at the Information Fair. It’s about our challenge to include experts in our course. Sometimes it’s hard or expensive to bring them into the classroom, so we decided to film their instruction. So far, a lot of visitors have been really surprised by that idea.’
André Soliva, student
‘To be honest, I’m still a student. I’ve just finished my bachelor’s in Art History and applied for a master’s in Cultural Analysis. During my bachelor’s, I’ve had lectures by teachers who are here today, which got me interested in their research, also because I’m interested in following a career in academia myself. The fair gives me an opportunity to think about my future plans.’