Reform of Law School Curricula – creating 21st century education (by Bram Akkermans):
Reform of Law School Curricula – creating 21st century education. Curriculum reform is always complex as it touches on existing structures, courses and responsibilities. Still, from time to time it is necessary to update not only courses but also whole curricula. Preparing students for a 21st century labour market requires different knowledge – for example more multi- or interdisciplinary knowledge – and skills. Examples of the latter go well beyond information literacy and include capacity building to ensure a student can actually function in an intensive labour market.
In the past five years, the Maastricht law school has been reforming its bachelor curricula. In doing so the faculty has sought to integrate as many new insights and developments as we can. This includes a return to the core of PBL reaching following Maastricht’s CCCS principles in both content and skills teaching, a professional development track in which students work on personal leadership, feedback, collaboration, communication and global citizenship, and longer periods in which student collaborate intensively. This session will be devoted to share insights in how the curriculum overhaul was methodically approach to move from problem definition and analysis to create new objectives and design principles on the basis of which the faculty members together give shape to a revised programme.

Sustainable Teaching; How seriously do universities take their educational role (by Hans Savelberg):
How serious do universities take their educational role? The lack of attention given by higher education institutions to their educational mission has long been a concern, especially for those who care about education. Do universities really see teaching as an important part of their identity? Do they also convey that educational identity and mission to their staff and to society? In this session, I would like to discuss these and related questions with you, and also reflect together on whether we need to strengthen that educational identity and if so, how we could achieve that.

Blended Learning; a UM panel shares insights from daily practice (by Stefan Jongen):
The lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic have given a push to the discourse on the role of technology in education, and the concept of ‘blended learning’ in particular. As a result, there is now a common understanding that blended learning is not merely about using zoom and canvas, but rather about making design-based choices from a wide array of tools and resources. But what does that mean in practice? How do we make those choices? And: are there examples from within our UM teaching and learning community that inform and inspire, and that fit our educational philosophy? The members of the panel, from various UM faculties, have each developed and experimented with smaller to extensive applications of various tools and resources, and are happy to share their experiences with colleagues. During this panel session, there will be ample time for questions and discussion.

Workshop DIY Studio & Video Editing:
You want to record a presentation and turn it into a video to use in education. Fiddling with your webcam, screen recording your presentation, recording a voice-over with your phone… Then having to put it all together. Sounds complicated, right? It does not have to be! Join the UM Library DIY Studio & Video Editing workshop to develop your video skills and make professional-looking videos in no time. This workshop will have a hands-on approach, with practical tips and tricks that can help you bring your videos to the next level.
This session takes place at the Inner City UM Library.

Mentoring, advising and teaching; same difference? (by Oscar van de Wijngaard & Iris Burks):
Over the past decade, the advising landscape at Maastricht University has changed. Next to professional advisers (studieadviseurs), many faculties have begun to work with mentors or academic advisers, scientific staff who are assigned to advise and support students on specific topics. This raises the question: how do advising and teaching roles relate to one another? In this workshop, we explore the differences and similarities between teaching and advising/mentoring. After discussing the objectives of each role, we will investigate how the competences required for an advising/mentoring role differ from those for teaching.

Disentangling feedback and assessment (by John Harbord):
We all have to grade student work, and we all want to give students feedback. Most often, these two are combined, typically in forms that serve the dual purpose of accountability (justification of grades) and education (helping students to perform better). The new UM vision on assessment recommends more emphasis on feedback and less on grading, but how do we do that, and how do we overcome the pitfalls of trying to do both? This session addresses some of these pitfalls and offers suggestions for more education-centred forms of feedback. As well as input there will also hands-on feedback-giving activities.

Make, play, learn (by Marjorie Platero Martinez):
The Innercity Library makerspace is a unique, collaborative learning space that is open to everyone. It is a multipurpose flexible space for students and staff to study, join or organise workshops and tutorials and collaborate on projects, generate ideas and content, and develop 21st-century labour market skills. One of the activities available in the makerspace is Lego Serious Play. LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is a facilitation methodology developed at The Lego Group. Its goal is improving creative thinking and communication. People build with Lego bricks 3-dimensional models of their ideas and tell stories about their models. It is both applicable in research and education. This session will take place at the Inner City UM Library.

Global Citizenship Education (by Herco Fonteijn):
The strategic programme for 2022-2026, “The European university of the Netherlands”, portrays UM students as nascent global citizens. For instance, “UM offers modern and interdisciplinary study programmes and imparts on its students the core values of global citizenship” and “All our students develop global citizenship competences geared to the needs of the labour market, making them highly employable”. Global citizenship education (GCEd) can make teachers feel uncomfortable, when it seems vague, or not vague enough and contested, or no more than a branding exercise, or in the hands of a select group of true believers. In this workshop, we hope to inspire you by clarifying what GCEd is, offering concrete tools to tackle GCEd in your teaching, showing this need not create a heavier workload, and ideating on how you can build further capacity to integrate GCEd in your practice (hopefully with co-creation partners you will meet during this workshop).

Blended Learning Design (Barend Last):
In this interactive workshop, EDLAB’s blended learning specialist Barend Last shows what it is really about when we talk about blended learning. He discusses the definition, addresses misconceptions and let’s the participants experience designing blended learning. Of course, there is plenty of room for questions.

Assessing the ‘I’ in groupwork (by Walter Jansen):
Groupwork can be a rich learning experience for students in PBL, helping them to develop new skills and improve their group performance through related assessments and feedback. For teaching staff however, it often remains a challenge to keep track of and assess the group process. For example, how can you be aware of everyone’s role and contribution to the group, what should you do when students do not equally contribute (so-called free-riding) and how can you take this into consideration in the assessment? Using the EDLAB guide ‘Assessing the ‘I’ in groupwork guide’, this session looks at the design, delivery and assessment of groupwork and engages with experiences from the participants and other realistic cases.

Open Educational Resources (by Michel Saive & Gaby Lutgens):
Workshop on Open Educational Resources – creating, sharing and reusing material. Whether you are a student or faculty member, Open Educational Resources, or in short OER, can greatly benefit you during your time at Maastricht University. In this workshop, we will walk you through the process of finding suitable OER for your course and provide some guidelines to take into account when creating and sharing material yourselves. Topics we will address: repositories with useful open resources, information on copyright and licenses, making your material digital accessible for students with sensory or cognitive disabilities, platforms for sharing, good practices of UM colleagues. Bring your own laptop and material and let’s start sharing!

Workshop DIY Studio & Video Editing:
You want to record a presentation and turn it into a video to use in education. Fiddling with your webcam, screen recording your presentation, recording a voice-over with your phone… Then having to put it all together. Sounds complicated, right? It does not have to be! Join the UM Library DIY Studio & Video Editing workshop to develop your video skills and make professional-looking videos in no time. This workshop will have a hands-on approach, with practical tips and tricks that can help you bring your videos to the next level.
This session takes place at the Inner City UM Library.

Make, play, learn (by Marjorie Platero Martinez):
The Innercity Library makerspace is a unique, collaborative learning space that is open to everyone. It is a multipurpose flexible space for students and staff to study, join or organise workshops and tutorials and collaborate on projects, generate ideas and content, and develop 21st-century labour market skills. One of the activities available in the makerspace is Lego Serious Play. LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is a facilitation methodology developed at The Lego Group. Its goal is improving creative thinking and communication. People build with Lego bricks 3-dimensional models of their ideas and tell stories about their models. It is both applicable in research and education. This session will take place at the Inner City UM Library.

Theme Lunch “What was normal, again?”

When restrictions were gradually lifted after two years of lockdowns and online education, going back to ‘normal’ wasn’t always as easy as we might have thought or hoped. Re-establishing the culture, commitment and routine in the classroom that are necessary to truly engage students and staff in the teaching and learning process can be a challenge!
During this lunch, we discuss ways to rekindle the spirit of collaborative learning and overcome the side effects of learning and working within the confinement of Zoom and Teams.

Theme Spaces:

throughout the two UM Education Days, two rooms at EDLAB will be dedicated to specific themes. In these Theme Spaces you can find information, ask questions and share your ideas on topics that figure prominently on UM’s educational agenda: Feedback & Assessment (room 0.106 “Kleine Serre”), and Technology Enhanced Education/Blended Learning (room 1.006). Next to a few regular sessions related to these themes, several short presentations and discussions will take place in the Theme Spaces as well. The program for these shorter sessions will be made available during the Education Days.

In our very own Teaching & Learning Cafeteria, you can informally enjoy a great cup of coffee, whilst having a discussion with fellow visitors, people from EDLAB and students participating in EDLAB’s excellence programmes. Examples of EDLAB’s projects will be showcased and further explained. There is no official programme or activities planned here, just space for discussions and inspiration, we hope you enjoy it!

Shining a light on bright students – Giftedness UM (by Anke Smeenk):
Giftedness is not merely about being an ‘Einstein’ and having an IQ score >130. Among students as well as among teachers confusion exist about giftedness. There is no clear definition, while there are many assumptions about giftedness, like the idea that a student should only achieve high grades and never get stuck at university. In fact, giftedness is not only mental acuity or cognitive ability, but it is a set of characteristics, including also sensitivity, doubt and setting (too) ambitious bars. Although gifted students mention the same problems as their peer students, an extra layer of complexity is added because of these characteristics and this can influence their personal well-being and academic performance in a negative way. Understanding of these layers by themselves and by the people in their environment like tutors/teachers/mentors, will support gifted students to develop and use their talents and learn them how to thrive in (academic) life.
After participating in this session, you will:
…have an alternative framework regarding stereotypical thinking about giftedness.
…have insight into the different struggles and associated underlying processes that gifted people may encounter.
…understand which aspects may support gifted students and how you as a mentor/tutor/teacher etc. can be of value in the guidance of these students.”

Results from the EDLAB student Monitor (ESAB):
The EDLAB Student Advisory Board (ESAB) offers a unique perspective on EDLAB projects, providing early feedback to EDLAB projects and giving insights from a student point of view. As such, this year’s ESAB-students have designed and conducted a student monitor to check the experiences and concerns of their peers regarding education, assessment, engagement and well-being. During this session, ESAB-members present their approach and main findings.

Workshop DIY Studio & Video Editing:
You want to record a presentation and turn it into a video to use in education. Fiddling with your webcam, screen recording your presentation, recording a voice-over with your phone… Then having to put it all together. Sounds complicated, right? It does not have to be! Join the UM Library DIY Studio & Video Editing workshop to develop your video skills and make professional-looking videos in no time. This workshop will have a hands-on approach, with practical tips and tricks that can help you bring your videos to the next level.
This session takes place at the Inner City UM Library.

Valuable Feedback – the co-creation process continues:
What is good feedback? Is it more than justification for a grade? During an online co-creation event in January of this year, students and teaching shared and discussed their perspectives on these questions and brainstorm together about the future of feedback at UM. In this follow-up session, key findings from that event will serve as a starting point for further joint exploration of questions such as, how does feedback lead to successful learning? Is standardized feedback the way to go? Or peer feedback? How important is transparent alignment between learning and assessment? What are obstacles for valuable feedback and how can we overcome these?

Educational research, from research question to results to implementation in the classroom (by Taskforce Learning & Innovation):
In this workshop organized by the Taskforce Learning and Innovation, we will dive into the world of educational research. Brace yourselves, you will have to work for, and of course also with, us! In a gallery walk format, the attendees will (literally) move from topic to topic and discuss how certain research results can help us develop better educational activities. We will also think about the type of questions we should research. For instance, how can we learn more about the negative expectations parents of first generation students have about their child’s studying? Or how can course coordinators and tutors promote certain study strategies in class if research showed that these are highly effective? We will also provide a stage for one of the first projects that received seed money through the Learning and Innovation Research grant in 2021.

Getting groups on track (by Team Focus):
Team Focus is known for their experiential learning approach, which makes every session very insightful, meaningful but also a lot of fun. This session takes place on the grounds of Tapijn.
Group work can be a valuable experience for students, helping them to gain new skills and learn from each other. For teaching staff however, it can sometimes be challenging to keep track of what is happening and facilitate the process in the best way to get the most out of the group. In this workshop, we will discuss how to empower groups to work independently and to stay on task, whilst retaining a clear overview on the process. This training session focuses specifically on facilitating effective group dynamics in project teams, and tutorial groups. We will be working on questions like: how can I ensure that the group members quickly connect with each other? How can I work on trust within a group, so that more openness and involvement arises? What do I do if the group is not functioning well?

Workshop DIY Studio & Video Editing:
You want to record a presentation and turn it into a video to use in education. Fiddling with your webcam, screen recording your presentation, recording a voice-over with your phone… Then having to put it all together. Sounds complicated, right? It does not have to be! Join the UM Library DIY Studio & Video Editing workshop to develop your video skills and make professional-looking videos in no time. This workshop will have a hands-on approach, with practical tips and tricks that can help you bring your videos to the next level.
This session takes place at the Inner City UM Library.

Study Smart; future steps in how to support students’ self-regulated learning at UM (by Anique de Bruin & Felicitas Biwer):
The Study Smart program is a learning strategy training for first-year students, aiming to create awareness of, practice with, and reflection on effective learning strategies with the ultimate goal to sustainably increase students’ use of these strategies and improve their learning. Since its start in 2017, the program has been continuously improved and is now implemented, to different extents, in all faculties at UM and outside UM. In this workshop, we will first share our insights and experiences in implementing Study Smart at UM. Then, we will discuss current challenges and future steps with regard to fostering self-regulated learning at UM. For example: What is needed to make Study Smart relevant to you? How does the way we assess our students influence their motivation to self-regulate their learning?

How to motivate students (by Team Focus):
Team Focus is known for their experiential learning approach, which makes every session very insightful, meaningful but also a lot of fun. This session takes place on the grounds of Tapijn.
In this workshop we will discuss how people are motivated and how you can use this to facilitate an environment in which students learn and grow. With a focus on group work and group learning, we will work on questions like: what different kinds of motivations are there? How to adapt your teaching style to foster growth in students? How to create an environment that helps students to learn and grow?

Creative methods in higher education; making it real (by Arie van der Lugt):
How can we unleash the creative force in our students? Surely, just presenting them with a wicked problem, a double diamond, post-its and wobbly furniture is not enough. In this workshop, we will show a number of creative thinking techniques and invite reflection on how we can make this type of activity real. By the end of the workshop, you should have a better understanding of what you can do to enhance student’s creative problem solving skills.

Operationalizing engagement: towards a systematic review of the student experience (by Oscar vd Wijngaard):
Student success and (as well as retention and completion) are known to be closely related to the degree of engagement students feel with their studies and their study environment. At EDLAB, we developed a simple model based on three distinct yet related dimensions of engagement – affective, behavioural and cognitive – to analyse the impact education (and processes around education) has on students. Participants in this workshop will come away with an understanding of the key concepts within engagement literature, and a hands-on analytical model they can use as they reflect on the way they deliver and organize their teaching. There will be ample time reserved during the workshop to experiment with the model.

Effective Course Evaluation; the teacher perspective (by Matthijs Krooi):
Course evaluations is among the most important instruments for maintaining education quality in a university context. It can be a contentious topic associated with bureaucratization, biases, and misuse. Also, there are many different manners of performing course evaluations: is it only about student satisfaction, or is there more to it? This interactive session explores how to design a course evaluation system aimed at helping teachers maintain and improve quality.

Theme Spaces:

throughout the two UM Education Days, two rooms at EDLAB will be dedicated to specific themes. In these Theme Spaces you can find information, ask questions and share your ideas on topics that figure prominently on UM’s educational agenda: Feedback & Assessment (room 0.106 “Kleine Serre”), and Technology Enhanced Education/Blended Learning (room 1.006). Next to a few regular sessions related to these themes, several short presentations and discussions will take place in the Theme Spaces as well. The program for these shorter sessions will be made available during the Education Days.

In our very own Teaching & Learning Cafeteria, you can informally enjoy a great cup of coffee, whilst having a discussion with fellow visitors, people from EDLAB and students participating in EDLAB’s excellence programmes. Examples of EDLAB’s projects will be showcased and further explained. There is no official programme or activities planned here, just space for discussions and inspiration, we hope you enjoy it!