The 2013-2014 academic year heralds the start of a new teaching model for the University of Twente. The new model is based on project education. Last year, the Biomedical Technology (BMT) programme served as a pilot for the new teaching model. Heleen Miedema, whose duties include those of the programme director for BMT, has made a preliminary evaluation of this year: “The list of positives far outweighs the list of negatives.”
Back to the core business. According to Heleen Miedema, this was the main reason for taking a long, hard look at the teaching at UT. “Furthermore, we are a university and like all other universities, we are being confronted with all kinds of financial woes that are compelling us to find more efficient ways of working. We took a close look at all our programmes trying to find what they had in common; the answer was the verb engineering. We are the enterprising university. If you look up the word enterprising in a dictionary, you will find: the courage to take risks. People used to say that you went to Delft to study, to Eindhoven to learn and to Twente to solve problems.” According to Miedema, Twente needs to reinstate this basis. “To my mind, our capacity to solve problems is one of the UT’s strongest qualities. At least it was. I think we’ve lost touch with this ability and I hope that the new teaching model will go some way to reinstating it.”
Link with the practical field
According to Miedema, project education is the perfect instrument. “Project education fits our engineering mindset like a glove. It begins with a problem, which you then analyse before searching for a solution.” The link with the practical field is essential, she continues. “In the new Twente teaching model, we take a real and present problem from the research field of a professor or a company, and link the theory and to the practice.” To illustrate her point, she cites a module on the early diagnosis of cancer, like the one taught during the BMT programme last year. “We give the students cells and although this may sound strange, we let them cultivate cancer. It gives them an understanding of how normal cell division works and what happens when it goes wrong. You can teach this from a book, but we prefer to let them see it for themselves. To study the cells, you need a microscope, so the students find themselves in the field of optics. Again, we don’t just use the textbook, but let them build a microscope. In other words, this is a practical way of combining two totally different disciplines.”
Drop-out rate
“This method of teaching allows students to identify with the field much sooner. A closer link between research and education gives them a better idea of whether they are on the right programme much earlier on.” During the first two quartiles of the BMT pilot year, more students dropped out than in previous years. But fewer left the programme later on in the year. Miedema: “These students are in a better position to switch programmes at an earlier stage.”
Character
In Miedema’s opinion, the new teaching model creates a system that encourages students to fulfil their true potential: the students are not passively absorbing knowledge, but actively searching for the information they need to solve concrete problems. “I don’t find students that say ‘tell me what to do and I’ll do it’, anything like as interesting as students that say ‘this is my problem and I’ve found the right solution’. So this new teaching model is designed to strengthen the students’ characters so that they discover their own strengths and weaknesses.”
Although the new Twente teaching model is supposed to shorten the average time it takes a student to graduate, Miedema certainly doesn’t see it as a simplification of the programmes. “The students are stretched enormously. We expect them to work continuously, particularly towards the end of a project when they practically work around the clock.”
Groups
“The new teaching model requires students to spend more time working in groups, supervised by a tutor. We don´t just focus on knowledge and skills, but also test attitude: where are your strengths and how do you function in a group? Education is more than the simple transfer of knowledge.”
According to Miedema, working in a group has numerous benefits. “Students learn to take on certain roles, for example, and how to negotiate and collaborate. As a group, they learn to acknowledge and capitalize on each other’s strengths so that the group can function better as a whole.”
Exams
Another important advantage to Miedema’s mind is the fact that the percentage of students sitting exams remains high throughout the year. “In previous years, 98 to 100 percent of students took the first rounds of exams, but this figure soon dropped. What we are seeing now is that students feel more closely involved in the education. If you offer smaller modules, students are able to choose which subjects they want to do.”
Miedema is also in favour of tailor-made resits. “If you have a good reason for not being able to take an exam, you will obviously be allowed to take it later, but in principle this will be an individual arrangement. We will decide who is eligible for an additional exam on an individual basis. But anyone who fails a substantial number of modules has obviously not understood the material and will have to repeat the quartile.”
Points for improvement
So the first year of the pilot is now over. It was a tough year, says Miedema. “Lecturers, staff, students, examination board members … everyone involved worked extremely hard. It takes time to set up something new. This has been a huge organizational operation, and it’s by no means perfect; there is still room for improvement. We must improve the communication to students and lecturers, for example. And our policy on exams wasn’t clear enough when we started out. Students weren’t informed in time about what they had to do to pass a module. Lecturers were not always entirely sure about their role either. They are used to teaching subjects that they know inside out. Project education is different; a lecturer can be asked questions about something entirely outside his/her field. So we have to teach lecturers to switch between the roles of teacher and tutor. We must also make sure that students have more opportunity to assimilate information in other ways, using e-learning modules for instance. However, although we still have plenty to do, the list of positives far outweighs the list of negatives.”
