How UU aims to educate the dream graduate

Twenty-two years ago, after the introduction of the Bachelor's-Master's system, UU debuted an education model establishing that its students would receive personal and activating education, with great freedom of choice. According to Vice-Rector of Education Manon Kluijtmans, these remain valuable principles. "Both in the Netherlands and abroad, I often hear prospective students and colleagues talk with admiration about the room our students are given to shape their studies themselves. Because of this shared vision, teachers and programmes can easily connect in Utrecht, without it becoming a straitjacket."

One might assume there would be no need to change that university education model...
It's true, there was no need to throw it in the bin or revise it drastically. But we needed to take a critical look at it. After all, the way we think about education at the university level and the university's role in society has changed. For example, we now place more emphasis on the contribution of academics to solving major societal problems such as climate change, cybersecurity, or polarization.

Over the past year, we have been working with education directors, vice deans, lecturers and student assistants to scrutinise the education model. Does it still match the vision of a university focusing on Open Science and the other principles in the Strategic Plan? Are we perhaps missing something that we would like to have in there?

And what was the conclusion?
The desire to provide personal and activating education still stands firm. The same goes for our principle of giving students insight into their progress during a course. But we needed a clearer vision. What do we really want to train students for? This led us to develop the model further.

Now, we place even more emphasis on the idea that students should be able to develop as academics and as people; and that they learn to think about the role they want to have in society. Teachers should support them in this process.

We still want to give graduates a strong disciplinary academic foundation, but we also want to do justice to the growing focus on interdisciplinary forms of education and transdisciplinary collaboration with social institutions and companies.

With that vision as our guide, we considered what a dream UU graduate should look like. What knowledge and skills would they have? Ten attributes are now included in the model (see box below). Of course, this doesn't mean that students will soon have to meet this ideal image 100 per cent. But we do want to invite students to develop in that way." 

What should the ideal UU graduate be able to do? These are the ten attributes the university would like its alumni to have:
 

1. Develops and uses academic knowledge for academic and social issues

2. Thinks critically and constructively about innovative insights into academic and social issues

3. Can communicate academic insights to specialists and non-specialists

4. Acts ethically and with integrity in the interests of society

5. Works across borders with an open mind to other disciplines and society

6. Can cooperate based on equality and reciprocity

7. Displays personal leadership in science and society

8. Is reflective towards self, others, the field and society

9. Acts flexibly in changing academic, personal and social circumstances

10. Acts respectfully with an open and appreciative attitude towards others and the living environment
 

If we want students to learn all that, we're also requiring courses to change...
We hope that programmes will start examining whether their teaching and assessment contribute to what we want students to learn. Inspired by Biesta (Gert Biesta, educator, Ed.), we distinguish three types of goals to keep in mind: mastery goals, experience goals and supply goals.

We are sufficiently familiar with mastery goals at university. These are the traditional learning objectives, for which we ask the question: "When completing the programme, the student should be able to ..." and then we fill in the blanks. But education is also about socialisation and personal development, aspects more reflected in the other two goals.

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary courses have now passed the stage of "fun pilots". They must become an integral part of the curriculum for all students. In many places, this is already the case, by the way.

Such courses are mainly about experiential objectives. There is more room for teachers and students to explore new territory, so they don't know exactly how the process will go. Again, we already see this happening in many places at our university. For example, many are enthusiastic about teaching concepts like "community engaged learning"  and ”challenge-based learning". Veterinary medicine students are trying to reduce the number of stray cats in the Netherlands by partnering up with a foundation. Another example is the "Interuniversity Sustainability Challenge", in which undergraduate students from Utrecht, Eindhoven and Wageningen are coming up with creative solutions to sustainability issues in collaboration with Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

We also want to guide students even better in their learning process, so they can develop their own interests and ambitions and fill in their elective space in a way that deepens and broadens the regular curriculum. One medical student might want to take courses in history and law because they are interested in how war and conflict affect health, while another medical student might take a course in sociology because they are interested in health disparities between populations.

Is this what students expect, though? We sometimes hear that teachers must go to great lengths to get students involved in these types of work. Besides, many students do not make use of their freedom of choice at all...
In my experience, most students want to be challenged. I recently supervised a group of students who had to come up with research questions for a health challenge and I was amazed at how hard they worked. Students also say they are very excited about this kind of education in their course evaluations.

We are concerned, indeed, that students often fill the elective space in a "defensive" and disciplinary way. I hope this modified model invites us to pay more attention to who students are and what they want. From there, students can choose how to fill the elective space. This is very different from saying: "You can choose from anything, so go ahead".

Of course, some students are less interested in such an approach. Therefore, we must educate prospective students well and tell them what our vision is. When you come to study here, you need to know what the education is focused on and what to expect. If that doesn't appeal to you, you might be better off studying somewhere else. 

Some students and lecturers see these plans as a threat to disciplinary education. Will students still be able to become good historians or biologists if there is less room for subject-specific components? 
Of course, it is always important to allow the core of a discipline to sufficiently emerge as it determines the way someone views the world. In my experience, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education can be extremely helpful when it comes to experiencing and getting to know your own discipline. It encourages you to reflect on your discipline and yourself, therefore contributing to developing a professional identity. Students learn about what they can contribute and what the limits of their own discipline are. Moreover, society's problems are so complex that a monodisciplinary approach has become unthinkable.

If gaining experience and directing your own education becomes more important, how are we going to test whether or not a student meets the learning objectives? 
Assessment should become even more of a process that supports a student's learning and development, and less of a final assessment at one point in time. That idea was already in the education model as a didactic starting point but was often simplified in practice through interim tests.

We should still be able to prove to society that a student has earned a degree, but an assessment programme should also focus on formative testing, which involves giving students feedback on what is not going well, what is already going well, and what the next steps could be. In that context, we also speak of a feed-up or feed-forward process, which means that sometimes it is not necessary to think in terms of "show that you have learned this and that" but rather "indicate what you have learned". In courses that use community-engaged learning, students might write a reflection report and substantiate what they have learned, for example.

Some programmes already use the idea of programmatic testing (page in Dutch, Ed.), where learning activities are an integral part of testing. Some Master's programmes are even considering giving no more grades, instead shifting the focus to the development of competencies and skills. That may be too extreme an approach for many programmes, but assessment matters and is very complex. Programmes, examination boards, lecturers and programme committees will have to think about this together, carefully. Which forms of testing match the learning objectives and the learning activities?

At first glance, the adjustments to the model seem to demand a lot from lecturers' time and skills. Doesn't that lead to high workloads, especially with the budget cuts coming?
The workload is alarmingly high, indeed, and we would have preferred to introduce this modified model at a time when we have more money instead of less. But in the current situation, it is all the more important that we start determining together where we are going to focus our energies. What is the core of our education? What needs to go? What new things do we need to do? What new things do we not need to do? We're just saying what we consider essential and that's a good thing. Only by making choices can we ensure that the workload does not increase further. Preferably, it would decrease.

Teachers have always guided students' development, teaching them to learn. That is part of their job and it is usually very satisfying. What does worry me is how massive some programmes are, and how high the workload is there. Even though we have many students and a tight budget, we will have to keep ensuring that students are heard and do not feel lost in a teaching factory. We will also need to ensure lecturers' workloads remain within limits.
 

To what extent is this model now being imposed from the top? Did teachers have a say in the design? 
These past few years, we often heard that they needed more guidance when it came to developing their teaching. That was a hot topic. So, this modified model has come from the university's teaching community itself, more than anything else.

We are not instructing faculties and programmes to transform their entire teaching within one or two years, either. The main idea is that teaching teams will have this shared vision in mind when developing their programmes every year. So it is part of the usual quality assurance cycle. Programmes will have five years to implement it in its entirety, the duration of the Strategic Plan due this spring.

Faculties and programmes have great freedom to set their accents in this regard. This is also logical because a principle like "working together across borders" can have a different meaning in each discipline. Above all, we wanted to create a clear overarching vision.

Personally, I believe teaching teams can reflect on what they are doing and measure whether they are achieving what they want. We need to make sure teachers can do that and are given the time to do so. That means taking our Recognition & Rewards seriously and truly valuing teaching careers. In my view, that is an indispensable capstone of our education model.

Honours programmes framework 
The university is looking into scrapping the honours programmes at the Bachelor's level organised by the faculties. In its austerity programme, the Faculty of Humanities already announced its intention to stop taking new students in its honours programmes, citing the adjusted education model, which states that "everyone is excellent". This sentence prompted heated reactions from those who are against closing the programmes.

Kluijtmans: "I understand the consternation and the need for students to distinguish themselves. But if you offer more options for a selective group, there is a risk that you go against principles such as inclusivity and equality. After all, those who are admitted often already have a head start. Until now, every Bachelor's programme was obliged to offer an honours programme. We see things differently now. I am in favour of talent development for everyone, including students who want and can do additional things, but that doesn't have to happen within a specific faculty-based honours programme."