On the use and abuse of “evidence based policy”, lessons from teaching philosophy in coronatijd
By Darian Meacham As the Netherlands goes into another light lockdown, UM staff and students are again dealing with a changing landscape of public health policy regulations and recommendations, with these come tough philosophical questions. In September when we returned…
Emily Levine on the Hard Compromises behind Academic Innovation
By Patrick Bijsmans FASoS assistant professor and editor of RevDem Ferenc Laczó recently met with Emily Levine (Stanford University) to discuss key ideas in her new book Allies and rivals: German-American exchange and the rise of the modern research university….
Let’s talk about teaching assistants and ‘Erkennen & Waarderen’
By Patrick Bijsmans When our BA European Studies (ES) started in 2002, I embarked on a job as teaching assistant at FASoS. A crazy time, but also a fun and rewarding one. I was the only teaching assistant back then….
In search of the holy grade: Evaluating (under)graduate theses
By Johan Adriaensen The (under)graduate thesis is a challenging exercise not only due to its length, but also due to its unstructured format. There is no pre-determined set of questions that require answering, no pre-defined theory or method to arrive…
What happens when a FASoS tutor suddenly becomes a student again? Reflections from the other side of the lectern
By Elsje Fourie This has been an upside-down year in all sorts of ways, and I’m no exception. After more than a decade on the other side of the classroom, I suddenly found myself cast in the role of a…
Three lessons learned on how to use online components in a (post-)pandemic teaching environment
By Clara Weinhardt As another academic year shaped by online teaching is coming to an end, everybody is longing to bringing education back to our campuses. While we may not like it, we currently do not know with certainty in…
Transnational reflections on online teaching and learning
By Patrick Bijsmans & Simon Lightfoot It’s been over 15 months since we’ve had to suddenly move our courses online. A time during which we have learned many new things about synchronous versus asynchronous learning, about the technicalities of Microsoft…
Analogue becomes digital: An educationalists’ perspective on teaching and learning in times of the COVID-19 pandemic
By Diede Diederiks In March 2020, I started working at FASoS as an educationalist. It seemed like a clear job, working at the educational policy department on a couple of ongoing projects. How little did I know about the changes…
How Englishisation is changing higher education
By René Gabriëls & Robert Wilkinson The Englishisation of education and research attracts worldwide interest – not just from scholars, but also among the general public. Englishisation can be defined as the process in which the English language is increasingly…
Pre-lecture surveys: Activating students before class
By Yf Reykers Kahoot, Mentimeter, Wooclap, Gosoapbox. Does this sound familiar? These digital platforms are nowadays part of our standard teaching toolbox, perhaps even more so after a year of online teaching. But no matter how interactive, much of students’…
“In God we trust, all others must bring data”: Introducing BA DS students to quantitative data analyses, R programming and Big Data
By Eliyahu Sapir & Thomas Frissen In January 2021, second-year BA Digital Society students followed an intensive introduction to big data analysis. Students were trained in quantitative data analyses and using R and RStudio in an earlier course. They employed…
S/He said what? Managing interaction and feedback along an MA thesis trajectory
By Lauren Wagner; graphics by Pinelopi Kaslama The students of this year’s MA Globalisation and Development Studies (GDS) have just rounded up Period 3 working on their MA thesis proposals. As they finished the thesis development course, I heard from…
Designing a new course in and beyond COVID-19 times
By Patrick Bijsmans PBL course design is a recurring topic in academic literature, but also in staff development. This concerns, for instance, applying general PBL principles to assignment design, but also the need for varying assignments. The design process is…
