Educational Resources Pool

The Educational Resources Pool (Educatieve Middelen Pool, EMP) offers faculties the option of requesting educational advice and support for the improvement and innovation of their education. The EMP can be used to provide support with a single course, a study component, method, or instrument as well as a complete curriculum, educational organisation, or quality assurance.

Yearly, each faculty receives educational support based on its number of students. Ten percent of the available hours per faculty are reserved for professional consultation for academic staff.

Utrecht Educational Incentive Fund and the Educational Resources Pool

EMP hours are allocated to university and faculty projects from the Utrecht Educational Incentive Fund as much as possible, with a minimum of 100 EMP hours per project. These projects focus on educational issues related to the Strategic Plan of Utrecht University. Each year, specific themes are defined by the Board of the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning, to which projects have to be related.

The allocation of EMP hours is integrated in the planning and procedure of the Utrecht Educational Incentive Fund.

EMP providers

The following providers from the UU are available for educational advice. See their expertise in the fold-out menus.

Educational Development and Training (O&T) is experienced in EMP support for all faculties and the interfaculty cluster. The expertise of the educational consultants of O&T can be summarised to the following themes:

Didactics and differentiation
How do you activate your students in a tutorial or lecture? How do you challenge honours students? How can students’ learning be supported optimally?

Internationalisation
How do you handle internationalisation of the curriculum. How do you teach effectively in English? How do you adapt your education to be more inclusive of diverse cultural backgrounds?

Testing and feedback
For instance: development and implementation of rubrics, developing a testing policy, the use of portfolios, providing effective feedback to students.

Curriculum development
For instance: (re)designing and implementation of (blended learning) courses, e-modules, and programmes, designing learning tracks of academic skills, or deciding on final attainment levels and learning goals (constructive alignment).

Quality assurance
Evaluations of existing or newly developed courses and curricula.

Teacher professionalisation
Supplementary to the UTQ (BKO) and STQ (SKO), we provide support for teachers, starting or experienced, with questions regarding their education.

Interdisciplinarity
O&T supports a diverse set of programmes with their vision on an interdisciplinary approach, the development and implementation of interdisciplinary courses or programmes, the support of students in the development of an interdisciplinary perspective.

Lifelong learning
O&T has a wealth of knowledge of and experience with teaching professionals and can help programmes with their Lifelong Learning selection and the didactics for this target group.

(Supervision of) learning to research
How can lesson study be implemented in education? How do you, as a teacher, evaluate your own education (for instance using SoTL)? How do you improve the research skills of your students?

More information:

Contact persons: dr. Willemijn Schot (w.d.schot@uu.nl) and drs. Elma Zijderveld (e.m.b.zijderveld@uu.nl)
Website O&T

EMP projects in the spotlight

Carlo Giordano and Luisa Meroni found a new way of giving their students enough time to practice Italian grammar.
Lecturers Tessa Diphoorn and Nikkie Wiegink set to work with students in close reading sessions.
Fred Wiegant made an assessment matrix that can help lecturers with assessing interdisciplinary skills of students.