Dr Marloes Nederhand, assistant professor in Curriculum Innovation and Professional Skills at Erasmus School of Social and Bahavioural Sciences, is the winner of the Education Prize 2022. She received the prize during the Opening of the Academic Year 2022-2013 for her groundbreaking research on teaching methods. From the jury report: "Her deep understanding of theory and practice has delivered important tangible educational improvements that benefit our students."
Most educational researchers stick to laboratory-based studies. Nederhand, on the other hand, is able to successfully test new teaching methods in real classrooms. She has already achieved very concrete results with this. For example, she has developed an animation on how student feedback is used to improve teaching. Showing the animation more than doubles the response rate of students.
Testing assumptions from literature in practice
Nederhand also refutes assumptions from literature. She tested, for example, whether informing students about changes in a course after the course evaluation in an online summary influences the engagement of students in such evaluations. Although this was a much-praised method in the literature, the summaries showed no effect on student engagement.
Impact inside and outside our university
This demonstrates the vital importance of testing theoretical assumptions in everyday practice. The results were therefore immediately used to further optimise the Teaching Qualification (QE) in our university. The jury: "She has had a considerable (social) impact, both within and outside our university, by continuously emphasising the importance of education in research design and policy-making."
Marloes Nederhand is a home-grown talent: in 2010 she began her studies in Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Twelve years later she has become assistant professor and Education Research Ambassador at the Community for Learning and Innovation at our university. Her short career makes her achievements all the more remarkable.
About the Education Prize
Every year, the Education Prize is awarded to a lecturer at Erasmus University Rotterdam who has stood out in a particular way. For example by a passionate way of teaching or by using an innovative teaching style. Last year the prize went to Dr Ana Uribe Sandoval, the year before that to all lecturers at our university, for their extra efforts in corona time.