Showcase Professional Dialogues

  • Name teacher: Richta Ijntema
  • Faculty: Social Sciences
  • Tool: DialogueTrainer

Effective communication is one of the most important 21st century skills. It is often thought that this skill can only be learned through face-to-face education. However, recently developed technology makes it possible to do this also online, for example through the DialogueTrainer tool for conversation scenarios. From the beginning I have been involved in the development of this tool within two university-wide projects (these are the projects Communicate I and II; 2013-2019). First, I used this tool centrally and on a large scale in education, namely the course 'Professional Conversation' within the Psychology course (approx. 500 students per year).

Goals

1. The development of 14 online scenarios with the tool 'DialogueTrainer', among others in the field of reflection, giving feedback, listening, collecting information, regulating, nuancing, bad news conversation and GROW coaching.
2. Embedding the online scenarios in an online course 'Professional Conversation' offered via the ULearning platform of Utrecht University.

Results

See the showcase of the course ‘Professional Conversation’ by registering via this link (SolisID).

Educational evaluations show that students prefer online education over lectures. In practice, we notice the difference: students are better prepared, allowing more time for practice and deepening. An additional advantage is that fellow teachers can gain access to the (showcase of the) online course (see link above). This facilitates professional collaboration and enables active knowledge sharing across the boundaries of study programmes, faculties and even universities.