Jeroen Janssen - Senior Fellow

Jeroen about his Senior Fellow-project:

As director of education I come into contact with students from very diverse backgrounds. In conversations with students it became more and more clear to me that the transition from secondary school is not easy for all students. And this is especially the case with first-generation students. These are students whose parents do not have any experience in higher education. It also appears, for example, that this group of students in the Faculty of Social Sciences is more likely to drop out in the first year. An important reason for this is that first-generation students sometimes feel less at home at the university than other students. As a Senior Fellow, I am going to work on a project in which we will try to ensure that first-generation students feel at home at the university even before they start their studies. In this way we hope to contribute to the study success and study experiences of these students.

As an educational scientist, thinking about educational issues is in my DNA. We teach our students that when solving educational issues or designing education, you have to investigate exactly what the cause of the identified problem is. So in my project we will try to learn as much as possible from the experiences of current first-generation students in order to support this group of students who really meet their needs.

In my scientific research I focus on the use of educational technology and how educational technology can support learning processes, on the role of collaboration and interaction in education and on self-regulation of students' own learning processes. I look forward to sharing my knowledge on these and other topics within the Centre and to disseminating it further within the university.

In my work as a researcher, I try to challenge as much educational science knowledge as possible. I do this by, for example, giving lectures, being active on Twitter and contributing to the blog of the Educational Sciences programme. I hope to share my knowledge and experience within the Centre and also learn from the knowledge and skills of the other Fellows.