Who are the CLI Fellows?

Communicating and improving students’ interdisciplinary engagement with social (in)justice

Addressing pressing societal problems and, specifically, contributing to a more just society are EUR priorities. Thus, various faculties offer courses dealing with social inequality. A starting point of this CLI project is that students in those courses can learn much from each other’s (and the different lecturers’) work and perspectives. By setting up a shared website about social (in)equalities in Rotterdam, the project will engage students in such a multidisciplinary discussion about real life local problems and efforts to fight them. Since the website is open to the broad community, it will also enhance students’ awareness of the potential impact of their work and of the challenges associated with communicating about this topic in effective and socially responsible ways.

Supporting students to become resilient and confident learners: A blended course as a scaffolding tool to help students reach their full potential

One of the main targets of the Higher education quality agreements is to increase student wellbeing. EUR needs to find creative solutions to help students cope with stress and teach them how to deal with failure to have a happy and successful student life. At Erasmus University College, we offer a Liberal Arts and Sciences bachelor, where students are confronted with several stressful decision-making moments. The purpose of this project is to design and implement a parallel blended course that will run throughout the whole academic year, where students will work on their personal and professional development. It will be composed of different modules that will provide them through various workshops and online tools with resources to build up resilience.

Serious gaming for the development of interprofessional teamwork skills:

what is the optimal blended commitment in education?

Within medicine, attention is paid to the development of the interprofessional cooperation skill; a complex but important skill within healthcare. As an online preparation for small-scale education, we have developed a ‘serious’ game: Team Up. With this multi-player game, which is played by medical and nursing students, they can experience the pitfalls and also, contact education can become more effective. Not much is known about the most optimal blended designs of such education. How can the added value of online and contact education best come into its own and how can they optimally reinforce each other? What is the most effective blended design to train this?

The effect of goal-setting and other interventions on study success: Comparing the (combined) effect of different interventions at RSM and EUR

At DPECS, we offer an ACPA- and a premaster trajectory for those students who want to develop their knowledge and skills, and strengthen their position in the urban culturally diversified labor market. However, we know very little about whether our ACPA- en premaster students are able to enrich their work. Additionally, we have very limited insight into whether the urban culturally diverse educational and pedagogical work field benefits from the knowledge and skills that our ACPA- and premaster students acquire. By means of following our ACPA- and premaster students and alumni prior and during enrollment, and after graduation, we attempt to shed more light on these issues as well as create a system of continuous monitoring and evaluating the ACPA- and premaster curricula.

Coversity: Moving towards a co-creating university

Erasmus University Rotterdam strives to collaborate with students to realize better co-creation. To do so, students have many options of providing feedback, for example just after following a course. Unfortunately, many students do not use the possibility of providing such feedback, or its quality could be improved. A major reason that (detailed) observations are not made is that students are unsure if their remarks are actually used for changing and improving courses. An increase in transparency how feedback promotes educational improvements and innovations can increase the motivation to provide feedback and thereby improve co-creation. Thus, the main purpose of this CLI project is to facilitate co-creation by increasing the transparency of the usefulness student feedback.

Empowering students through interdisciplinary and intercultural education on sustainable development

The innovation project "Empowering students through interdisciplinary and intercultural education on sustainable development" is initiated by three EUR researchers and CLI fellows: Mélodine Sommier and Yijing Wang from ESHCC and Ana Vasques from EUC. This project consists of an honors course on "Communicating Sustainability in an Intercultural Context", and a research project investigating how students' knowledge, skills and attitudes develop and evolve through interdisciplinary and intercultural education on sustainable development. Combining educational innovation with societally relevant research, this project aims to advance the quality of education about sustainability, and to develop the mindset of EUR students to become culturally sensitive and forward-looking global citizens.

The effect of goal-setting and other interventions on study success: Comparing the (combined) effect of different interventions at RSM and EUR

The gender and ethnicity gap in academic achievement constitutes one of today’s key social problems. Prior research has shown that an evidence-based online goal-setting intervention can boost academic performance of students, particularly for males and ethnic minority students, decreasing the performance gap (Schippers, Scheepers, & Peterson, 2015). The current study builds on this and assesses the effects of a combination of interventions (goal setting, study choice meetings and a N=N) on the study results of subgroups of students. The idea is that academic performance of minorities and male students will most enhanced by the combination of two of these three intervention (SCM and goal-setting).

An induction programme for Early Career Academics

Given the little professional teaching preparation, the first teaching experiences of many of our Early Career Academics are daunting. Aside from the stress this may cause for ECAs, this situation may impede the quality of education. The present proposal addresses this concern by offering an induction programme. Firstly, this programme will include insights in the organizational structures. Secondly, it will offer extensive support during teaching the first course, consisting of a combination of group wise mentoring as well supervision by senior staff. Thirdly, the programme will offer additional workshops according to individual needs of participating ECAs. A qualitative study will be conducted to find out to what extent the programme impacts their experiences in a positive way.

Adaptive Personalized Education Pilot

The aim of this project is to build the basis for data-driven, personalized adaptive education at EUR. We build on cutting edge academic research and employ newest facilitating technologies. We develop a pilot application of adaptive education and a prototype of an online platform providing learning analytics to students and teachers.

Ask me and I will learn? Effects of quizzes on student learning and self-regulated learning when studying instructional videos

Blending traditional face-to-face (F2F) learning and web-based learning has been shown to be very effective – at least if students come to F2F meetings well-prepared. However, this is not always the case mainly because students often overestimate their own learning when studying instructional videos. Consequently, students quit their learning prematurely which impacts the effectiveness of the subsequent F2F meetings. The current project investigates whether integrating quizzes with instructional videos fosters student learning from these videos, improves students’ self-regulation and affects students' learning behavior. Findings contribute to the development of design guidelines on how to implement instructional video in education.

The Art of Seeing! Does looking at art help to avoid cognitive bias in decision making?

Looking at art is considered an interesting and useful way of learning observational skills. When looking at art, we often immediately have a feeling about the artwork, but when we observe more thoroughly, there is a lot more to see than we initially thought. An excellent and fun way of obtaining observational skills! But do those skills contribute to better decision making and improved performance in other settings?

In this project we aim to address the educational challenge of teaching observational skills and determine whether observational skills learned in an art museum are transferable to students’ observational skills in the diagnostic process, making students less susceptible to cognitive biases and fostering their diagnostic performance.

Martine Baars, Ph.D., is an educational psychologist at the Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies. Her research concerns instructional strategies to improve self-monitoring and self-regulation of learning in primary, secondary and higher education. She focuses on several aspects of self-regulated learning such as self-monitoring accuracy, motivation, learning strategies and cognitive load during learning in both offline and online learning environments (e.g., MOOCs) for individuals and groups. The role of technology and how it can enhance (self-regulated) learning is part of her research interests. As a researcher Martine is active in the Centre for Education and Learning (CEL) of the Strategic Alliance of Leiden University, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and Erasmus University Rotterdam, as well as in the Community of Learning and Innovation (CLI) at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. As a teacher Martine is part of the Department of Psychology, Education and Child Studies (DPECS) within the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral sciences (ESSB).

Fellowship project

Being able to regulate one’s own learning is important for academic success but was also found to be very difficult for students. In this project the effects of a mobile application (i.e., Study app) to support self-regulated learning processes of freshmen will be investigated. Martine will implement the app in the first course of the psychology curriculum and measure students’ motivation, satisfaction, SRL skills, and learning outcomes.

Dr. Delia Dumitrica is assistant professor at ESHCC’s Department of Media and Communication. Her research focuses on new media and grassroots collective action. She teaches courses on qualitative methodology and political communication, and supervises students in the master programs.

Dr. Jason Pridmore is assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University. As a sociologist, he has been researching the intersection of digital technologies and everyday practices and experiences from a variety of perspectives using qualitative methods.

Fellowship project

Improving Student Knowledge and Skills in Qualitative Data Analysis via Blended Education

Undergraduate students often struggle with methodology courses. The sheer amount of information they have to assimilate over a relatively short period of time can leave them feel unprepared for the practical aspects of data analysis. To address this issue, we have developed six online modules allowing students to learn about different methods of qualitative data analysis and to apply this knowledge to analyze different types of data in the context of CM2006 – Qualitative Research Methods. In this project, we assess the integration of these blended modules in students’ own learning practices. Where most literature on blended education tends to take a quantitative approach, focused on measuring a specific type of impact, our project is more interested in capturing the integration of blended education in students’ everyday study routines. This will allow us to better guide our students in actively developing learning practices conducive to their academic and professional success.

Gijs Elshout, MD, PhD, is a general practitioner and employed as an assistant professor at the Department of General Practice at Erasmus MC. As head of student education of his department, he is responsible for all the educational programmes and internships for the medical students, as provided by his department.

Fellowship project

He received a CLI-fellowship to implement new weblectures and webinars in the Bachelor’s programme of Medicine. In these lectures, comprehensive overviews of the previous studied medical themes will be provided. In the webinars, clinical cases will be discussed with medical specialists and general practitioners in order to teach medical students the different approaches of the various doctors and their considerations in these approaches.

Dr. Aleid Fokkema is a senior lecturer at ESHCC’s department of Media and Communication.  She has been involved in the IBCoM program from the start (in 2009) coordinates two mandatory year 1 courses concerned with writing and research skills. Aleid received CLI funding for adapting a serious game in ethical decision taking and from September 2019 she chairs the Media and Communication Programme Committee.

CLI Fellowship Project

Developing a Portfolio tool for future oriented soft skills

This project is about creating a tool for an online portfolio that rubrics and presents the various so-called soft skills students develop in the course of their degree.

The trend is that the future employment market will be looking for a number of ‘soft skills’ that are not mentioned in the standard overview of courses in a Bachelor’s degree. Future oriented soft skills include, for example: communication skills (this figures high on any list of future employability skills), leadership, critical thinking, creativity, team collaboration, strategic thinking, flexibility, giving and receiving feedback, dealing with failure, planning, and project management, all with their respective social, ethical, and intercultural dimensions.

These skills form part of the educational approach and assessment in many mandatory and non-mandatory courses in the IBCoM program. Apart from communication skills, however, they often do not explicitly form part of the courses’ end products, therefore remaining somewhat intangible. This means that students are not really aware of the sellable abilities they have developed in the course of a few years. Yet, IBCoM students score invariably high in evaluation reports issued by company coaches after completing their mandatory internship. They excel in team collaboration, their capacity to adapt to the company culture, taking initiative, and organising their work. These are the kind of skills employers are looking for in an increasingly flexible and generalized labour market.

A digital portfolio for these ‘soft skills’ meets the problem of their intangibility in the curriculum and lack of awareness on the part of students. The portfolio will reinforce our students’ position in the work field of the future. The fellowship project will cover the following steps:

1. Defining future oriented soft skills
2. Determining which of our courses contribute to these skills
3. Including additional online modules
4. Developing the digital portfolio proper

Dr. Joep Hofhuis is assistant professor at ESHCC’s Department of Media and Communication, where he specializes in intercultural and organizational communication. He was awarded a PhD in social and organizational psychology (University of Groningen, 2012), based on his research on cultural diversity in the workplace. Since then he has studied how individuals communicate across cultures in a variety of settings. One of his main research questions is how intercultural competences help individuals to effectively negotiate complex international environments.

Joep is a founding member of the working group of Intercultural Communication and Diversity (ICD) of the Netherlands Flanders Communication Association (NeFCA). Furthermore, he is a member of the International Association of Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) and the International Academy for Intercultural Research (IAIR).

Fellowship project

Measuring and Improving Students’ Intercultural Competences

Our university aims to equip students with the knowledge, insight and skills needed to communicate and interact successfully with others with different cultural backgrounds. Many of our study programs include international viewpoints and/or intercultural communication in their curriculum, but it remains unclear whether the programs are successful at teaching intercultural competences, and which teaching methods work best. In this CLI research project, I aim to shed new light on this issue. I will develop a way to measure the development of students’ intercultural competences over time, and provide advice on improving curricula and professionalization of lecturers with respect to internationalization and intercultural communication.

Marieke Meeuwisse (Ph.D.) is psychologist and sociologist with a Ph.D. in Educational Sciences. Her main research theme is (ethnic) diversity in higher education, with a special interest in the learning environment, student-teacher interaction and sense of belonging. She has extensive experience in course design and development and in teaching at the (under) graduate level. Marieke is appointed by the Ministry of Education as a Comenius Teaching Fellow in the field of equal opportunities for HE students. She is the project leader of the EU funded Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership on diversity and inclusion in higher education (#IBelong). Marieke is a recent research fellow of the Community for Learning and Innovation (CLI) with a project on the academic trajectories of diverse students at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Fellowship project

In the research project funded by CLI Marieke will investigate the interplay between students and the curricula of the course programmes in which they are enrolled. As such, she will learn more about the way in which the student-curriculum interplay affects academic trajectories of diverse students. She will use existing longitudinal student data from the university-wide database Erasmus Education Research, in combination with data from various curricula (i.e., curriculum scan) which need to be collected. Combining data on students’ academic trajectories and curriculum data will give an insight in possible turning points in diverse students’ academic trajectories throughout course programmes, which is an important step in explaining similarities and differences in academic outcomes of diverse students.

David Pols is a general practitioner in Rotterdam. In 2011 he finished his GP training and started as a GP in Nieuw Beijerland. In November 2012, together with a colleague, he started a GP-practice in Rotterdam Charlois. His PhD was finished at Erasmus MC in 2017. This PhD project focused on the epidemiology of atopic disorders in children. Currently he is working at the department of general practice. He coordinates the ‘clinical reasoning’ program for bachelor students. Furthermore, as chairman of one of the education committees, he is involved in developing in implementing a new course concerning ‘Diversity and Inclusiveness’.

Fellowship project

A dramatic increase in the demand for general practice services is expected. To encourage medical students to pursue general practice, Erasmus MC is integrating courses in its master curriculum that will expose students to general practice in their education. We will evaluate the impact of a two-week-long intensive course in general practice on fifth-year medical students’ attitudes toward general practice. We will use a 25-item survey to assess medical students’ knowledge, perception, and attitudes about general practice; the survey will be administered before and after the course. Furthermore, structural interviews will be used to study the experiences of the teachers that actually teach the students during their internships in the general practices. The objective of this study is to determine fifth-year medical students’ attitudes toward general practice before and after an intensive general practice course, as well as comparing their attitudes to medical students that didn’t follow such an intensive training at all. This will be a one-year project.

Andrea Woltman studied Biomedical Sciences (cum laude) and also received her PhD cum laude at the University of Leiden. She lead a research group within the Erasmus MC for 12 years, published many immunological research papers and received several prestigious research grants, awards and honors rewarding her scientific research and her qualities as educator of young scientists. Currently, she is associate professor and Director of the Bachelor Medicine (Erasmus MC) and completely focusses on education. She performs educational research and is chair of the Advisory Board of the institute of Medical Education Research Rotterdam (iMERR–Erasmus MC). She is especially interested in student selection, student performance and student well-being. As a former chair and member of the Young Erasmus Academy, she committed herself to strengthen interdisciplinary research within the EUR. Not surprisingly, she currently performs research in a multidisciplinary team combining sociology, psychology, and biomedical and educational sciences.

Fellowship project

Influence of admission and assessment policy on academic performance and well-being of students; Identification of impeding and stimulating student factors

Medical schools are challenged to create academic environments that stimulate students to maintain satisfactory progress, while maintaining their health. Many universities use an academic dismissal policy to promote student performance. Evidence that this measure indeed promotes study progress is scarce; it appears to be dependent on the student population and -demonstrated in our pilot study-increases the feeling of stress in a subpopulation of students. Additionally, medical schools’ admission policies may influence the characteristics of their student population. Whether admission policies influence the extent to which the student population can meet higher performance requirements without reducing their well-being, is not known. The project focuses on the effect of admission and assessment (BSa) policies on student performance and psychological and biological stress in medical students, and the possible differences for different subgroups. Student characteristics and factors of selection and BSa policies that correlate with academic outcome and student well-being will be identified.