Applicant: Liza van den Bosch (Education and Child Studies)

During the bachelor project PW, there are several points at which students receive feedback from their lecturer. Experience shows that these occasions are not always well utilized, because students do not (or cannot) indicate clearly where their feedback needs lie and as a result the lecturer cannot give targeted feedback. Through her Grassroots project, Van den Bosch wants to develop a method that, on the one hand, helps students pose better feedback questions increasing their feedback literacy and, on the other hand, enables instructors to give targeted feedback in an efficient manner.

Applicant: Fleur Mommersteeg (Education and Child Studies)

For practitioners within the field of Education and Child Studies clinical reasoning is an essential skill. Mommersteeg wants to give her students within the course Ontwikkelingspsychopathologie en diagnostiek the opportunity to practice this skill more. To facilitate this, she plans to develop an e-learning in which students can practice going through the diagnostic cycle, weighing the options, and arriving at the correct diagnosis through cases and receive a model answer with feedback and the teacher's reasoning afterwards. By comparing the model answer with their own elaboration, the students will be able to identify their reasoning errors and increase their mastery of the skills.

Applicant: Kim Stroet (Education and Child Studies)

In the Educational Innovations course, students reflect on educational innovation, educational research, and goals of (educational) innovation. Debate on these topics in the field are wide-ranging and include many perspectives. It is important to effectively convey the entire spectrum of perspectives so that students can form their own opinions in the debate and not (unconsciously) adopt the views of their lecturer. To this end, Stroet plans to record podcasts where people with different perspectives can present their own views. These podcasts can easily be integrated into the course, which is structured according to the flipped classroom principle.

Applicant: Kelly Ziemer (Psychology)

Graduate students first entering clinical practice encounter new and additional stress. Simultaneously, they need to learn to cope with the emotional burden and labour of working with clients who are distressed while also understanding their own internal processes. Ziemer aims to create a self-care module in which students will proactively learn coping strategies and develop a self-care plan, so they will enter the field better prepared and hopefully experience lower levels of stress.

Applicants: Julie Hall and Hanneke Hulst (Psychology)

Knowledge of the anatomy of the brain is indispensable in the field of Clinical Neuropsychology. Within the bachelor specialization course Clinical Neuropsychology, neuroanatomy is taught in the theoretical sense. In recent years, Hall and Hulst have provided an extra-curricular anatomy lab where their students were able to come into direct contact with all physical aspects of the brain. This was an enriching experience for the participating students, and the neuroanatomical knowledge also seemed to stick with them better. Therefore, Hall and Holly now want to make this extra-curricular activity a permanent part of their curriculum. The Grass Shoots will enable them to incorporate this permanently.

Applicants: Merel van Vliet and Mi-Lan Woudstra (Education and Child Studies)

For some years, students within the course Observaties van interacties binnen gezinnen have been asking for more opportunities to practice coding family interactions. Within the available teaching hours, it proved impossible to meet this request. Van Vliet and Woudstra want to make this added practice possible by designing their course in a blended format in which students can practice observing and coding in an online environment at their own pace as well as evaluate their own performance. In addition, the Observation course will soon be expanded to other bachelor's specializations, where a blended learning design is expected to better suit the larger numbers of students.

Applicant: Francesco Walker (Psychology)

In his course The Art of Applying Psychology Walker prepares his students for the most relevant aspects of dealing with “the outside world” of companies, organizations, and research institutes. As part of his course students need to present a pitch to a board of investors. Training their presenting skills in front of a live (large) audience is often necessary, but hard to organise. Last year, Walker received a Grassroots grant to pilot Virtual Speech, a VR-programme where students can practice in front of a live virtual audience, in his course The Art of Applying Psychology.

The pilot was successful and this year, through his Grass Shoots project, Walker aims to implement Virtual Speech further by having more of his students practice in Virtual Speech and giving them more opportunities to do so. At the same time, he will explore the options of broader implementation of the software within the university.