Your Honours+ project provides a unique opportunity to collaborate with fellow students and engage in independent, interdisciplinary research. During your studies, you have already conducted research with varying subjects and scales, but the essence of your work remained the same: trying to answer a particular question.

Before you design your Honours+ research, collect and analyze your data, it is imperative to be explicit and clear about what you are trying to find out. Your task therefore, requires a disciplined and thoughtful transformation of your ideas into clearly formulated research questions.

Developing a good research question is one of the most challenging stages of your research process.

In this workshop we will discuss the process of research and the scientific method, and focus on the first stage in research, namely identifying a problem in the real world and forming a research question to address it. We will also reflect on how to bring together your personal skills and how to make your research questions more relevant by employing an interdisciplinary perspective.

In preparation for this workshop, please read:
Trochim, W. M. K., Donnelly, J. P. & Arora, K. (2015). Research methods: The essential knowledge base. Cengage learning. Chap. 1, pp. 3-32

! If you cannot find a copy of this work in the library, know that we will send you the required chapter also via email 2 days prior to the workshop.

Available sessions:

• Wednesday 30.11.2022, 14:30-17:30 hrs;
• Thursday 01.12.2022, 09:30-12:30 hrs.

All “How to Formulate a Good Research Question” workshops are scheduled to take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless potential last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require it to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location/link two days before the session.

You can probably remember a time when your inner flame was really burning. You were in a creative flow. With energy flowing through your body. You felt you were able to take on the whole world. You were on fire!
And then you probably also know the moments when you just don’t feel like it at all. You are exhausted, tired, unmotivated. All you want is to immerse yourself in a Netflix series with a bar of chocolate in your hand.

In this workshop we will go on a journey within yourself to see how that inner flame of yours works. I will support you to find answers to questions such as:

• What about my energy on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level right now?
• For which things does my inner flame (not) burn?
• What underlying beliefs and mechanisms drive my actions?
• How do I balance my inner flame (yang action) with inner water (yin rest)?
• What perspective helps me in both the ups and downs?
• How am I going to shape my life in a way that suits me?

Will you join me on a journey within yourself?

Available sessions:

• Tuesday 28.03.2023, 17:30-20:30 hrs;
• Wednesday 12.04.2023, 09:30-12:30 hrs.

All “On Fire Without Burning Out” workshops are scheduled to take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless potential last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require it to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location/link two days before the session.

Creativity, or creative problem solving, is seen as one of the most important skills for the 21st century. A worldwide survey by IBM in 2010 under 1500 CEO’s stated that in an increasingly complex business world, creativity is a major leadership quality to embed in organisations. Next to our analytical know-how, we will need creativity to solve problems, to find opportunities and to accelerate change. Creativity is the outboard engine for innovation.

In this workshop we will give you a hands-on, introduction training in creativity skills and the creative process. You will work on a business case from the food industry and on a question/problem/case you are asked to bring along. Together we will try to find as many ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas as possible, for both cases. How to find extraordinary ideas and how to select and combine the best ideas? With the food industry case we will explore a couple of tools for divergent and convergent thinking. What is a good starting point for a creative process? We will tackle this using your own question/case.

We will wrap-up the workshop by discussing how to use creativity skills during your assignment. Furthermore, we will show you books on creativity and websites of interest.

Available sessions:

• Wednesday 08.03.2023, 13:30-17:00 hrs;
• Thursday 09.03.2023, 14:00-17:30 hrs.

All “Creative Problem Solving” workshops will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require them to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location two days before the session.

If you want to excel it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to do more, quantity wise. It foremost means that you deliver better quality. However, of course you really excel when you can do more and do it better.

The problem with our brain is that it needs to be able to focus on the task at hand and that’s hard when there’s so much going on. If you’re stressed, lack a good overview, or your life is just an all-around mess, it’s probably hard to excel at anything.

In order to overcome this, you should:

• know how your brain works to steer it away from procastination, “multitasking”, and distractions (e.g. a pesky social media habit);
• know how your brain processes information;
• streamline all the work that is coming at you (emails, homework, assignments, papers etc.);
• plan ahead for the large tasks so that you don’t have to do everything at the last moment;
• keep a good overview of everything on your plate and decide what to focus on.

In the Time-Management workshop we promise you one thing: we are going to cover all of these subjects (and more) in a non-boring fashion. You will be provided with ready-to-use insights and practical tips on how to stay on top of things with the use of the latest insights and technology (you may expect many useful suggestions for how various specific apps can adequately support time management).

Available sessions:

• Monday 27.03.2023, 13:30-16:30 hrs;
• Wednesday 26.04.2023, 09:30-12:30 hrs.

All “Time Management” workshops will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require them to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location two days before the session.

During this workshop we will dive into the Science of Well-being.

By teaching you how the brain works and providing you with recent findings on how to boost optimal functioning, this workshop will help you capitalize on positivity and improve your productivity, performance and well-being.

This workshop will be brought to you by drs. Barbara Kuiters. She is a skilled psychologist with an expertise in positive psychology and neuroscience. She runs a successful company as a psychologist, therapist and teacher to educate other (mental) health professionals on the power of positive psychology.

Available sessions:

• Friday 20.01.2023, 09:30-12:30 hrs;
• Wednesday 15.03.2023, 09:30-12:30 hrs.

All “Science of Wellbeing” workshops will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require them to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location two days before the session.

How do you ensure you make a convincing argument? Which techniques strengthen your argument and how can you best respond to questions? This debating workshop addresses these issues and provides you with useful knowledge and skills which you will apply directly in a debate about current issues in university education and society at large. During this inspiring and varied programme, you will be provided with insight into rhetorical skills and techniques that are of great value in your (future) work. Afterwards, you will be able to present your ideas and recommendations more convincingly, leading to greater impact.

Het Debatbureau (The Debating Bureau) is specialized in debating and presenting. Based in The Hague, the agency supports professionals and students with training and workshops, and team members serve as moderator for a wide range of events. Trainings focus on improved debating, presenting and persuasion skills.

Available sessions:

• Wednesday 08.02.2023, 13:30-16:30 hrs;
• Tuesday 14.03.2023, 13:30-16:30 hrs.

All “Debating Skills” workshops will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require them to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location two days before the session.

We all find ourselves in stressful situations from time to time. Whether at work, during our studies, or when life throws nasty surprises at you. This is normal. But, when does it become problematic? When are you in danger of stress becoming a danger to your health and what do you need to do to avoid this? This workshop will give you basic insights into what stress is, where it comes from, and its effects. You will also get to identify your stress sources and tips on how to better manage these stressors and how to ensure
you have enough resources.

Available sessions:

• Monday 06.03.2023, 18:00-21:00 hrs;
• Tuesday 07.03.2023, 13:30-16:30 hrs;
• Wednesday 29.03.2023, 09:30-12:30 hrs.

All “Stress Management” workshops will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require them to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location two days before the session.

Presentations and pitching styles can be as versatile as the subjects that are being presented. What makes a good presentation be memorable? How can you deliver the main message of your project in a professional way? From content to delivery, a strong presentation and the skills that are deployed during effective pitching can create bigger impact with the audience, and deliver the message they need to hear.

In this hands-on workshop, you will develop the draft of your final Honours+ presentation with Adina Petre, a High Performance Coach and Clinical Psychologist who’ll help discover and develop your ultimate presenter skills.

Together with Adina who is a former TED speaker coach, you’ll learn how to structure your content and deliver it in an engaging way, so that you give a sound academic presentation in an entertaining fashion that will increase your chances of winning the pitch competition at the end of your Honours+ experience.

As a jury member of several pitch competitions throughout her career, Adina knows the ins and outs of what makes a compelling pitch, and will be sharing them with you in this dynamic workshop.

Available sessions:

• Thursday 23.03.2023, 09:30-12:30 hrs (online);
• Wednesday 12.04.2023, 13:30-16:30 hrs.

The “Ultimate Presentation Skills” workshops will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X, except for the one on 23.03.2023, which will take place via Zoom. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location two days before the session.

People spend a lot of their time reading: students and knowledge workers alike. Weird enough we are not aware of how we read, why we wander off and what we can do to read better and faster. The adult reads with a speed of 200 to 250 words a minute and comprehends approximately 60% of what he is reading. With some practical tools and insights it is possible to double the reading speed without losing any text comprehension.

In this workshop you get a better insight in your own reading and information processing skills and learn how to double your reading speed and increase text comprehension in a practical and effective way.

The main focus of this workshop is to:

• Get valuable insights in the attention process during reading.
• Learn efficient reading strategies and techniques.
• Gain insight in inhibitions and distractions during reading combined with effective ways to tackle them.
• Learn practical tools to increase your reading speed and text comprehension.
• Practice with exercise texts to increase your reading speed and text comprehension.
• Track progress in reading speed and text comprehension.

The only way to learn speed reading is by actually doing it. That is why practicing is the main focus of this workshop. Reading exercise texts, tracking your reading speed and text comprehension is therefore the main activity in this workshop.

Available sessions:

• Tuesday 21.03.2023, 13:30-16:30 hrs;
• Monday 27.03.2023, 09:30-12:30 hrs.

All “Speed Reading” workshops will take place at EDLAB’s Tapijn Building X unless last-minute Covid-19 restrictions require them to be offered online. All attendees will receive a reminder email with the exact location two days before the session.