Universiteit Leiden

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LUC education team nominated for Dutch Higher Education Award

The Leiden University College team behind the Learning Mindset project has been nominated for the Dutch Higher Education Award, an award for innovative teaching in higher education. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science announced this on 15 March.

The Learning Mindset team has developed a toolkit that integrates journaling (a form of structured written reflection such as in a diary) into the teaching and learning at Leiden University College. With the toolkit, students learn to manage their own learning process by reflecting in an active and structured manner.

Learning from practice

Associate professor David Ehrhardt spoke about the toolkit in an earlier interview: ‘Students in university practise skills a lot, in writing essays, doing presentations and all kinds of other assignments. But very often they only practice, without setting clear goals and using feedback very deliberately to evaluate their performance and adjust their goals. So they don’t get into the cycle of deliberate practice, and so they don’t learn as much as they could from the practising. The skills journal is a simple (ideally handwritten) journal that students will use for each of their assignments in LUC courses, to keep track of their learning goals, feedback, and self-reflection and, in this way, use assignments to practice skills more deliberately.’

Besides the team from Leiden, teams from the University of Amsterdam and the University of Twente have been nominated for the prize. At the end of March, the teams will have to convince the jury with a demonstration of their innovative teaching.  On 12 May, during the Comenius Festival, the teams will hear whether they have won 1.2 million, 800,000 or 500,000 euros. 

The Dutch Higher Education Award (in Dutch) is recognition of educational innovation at universities and an important token of appreciation for educational teams that put in a top performance. In addition, it is an incentive for lecturers to continue working on educational innovation and knowledge sharing. 

Photo: stock photo of Leiden University College The Hague / Marc de Haan

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