Utrecht Education Incentive Fund (USO) has selected six teacher-driven innovation projects

Bringing together UU teachers working on interdisciplinary education is the focus of this project. A virtual knowledge platform will be developed where interdisciplinary UU initiatives are perpetuated and endorsed. The proposed activities of this platform are: (1) a toolkit for teachers, including space to share UU interdisciplinary practices and outcomes, and e-learning modules for developing and evaluating interdisciplinary education; (2) a network that supports interdisciplinary and interfaculty teaching and co-tutoring; and (3) resources for students and their advisors to help students explore opportunities for interdisciplinary learning.
Project leader: Jocelyn Ballantyne

The aim of this project is to move from education for professionals to education with professionals. For this purpose, an evidence-based and broadly applicable educational design will be developed, in which professionals, students and teachers learn together in a learning community. In addition to the design principles that need to be formulated, courses will be developed in which customised education for professional target groups is linked to existing UU education programmes.
Project leaders: Arnold Wilts & Peter van der Heijden

The goal of this project is to develop an innovative interdisciplinary challenge-based laboratory course, in which groups of undergraduate students work together on the same pressing medical-social issue. This will create a translational medicine approach: collaboration between different medical disciplines. To realize this, a network of physical laboratory spaces will be implemented ('Bachelor Research Hubs') at different locations within the UU.
Project leader: Niels Bovenschen

To support students in their study motivation and study behavior, the THERMOS project (2018-2021) with a learning analytics dashboard including actionable feedback and reflection assignments was developed. With this, students analyze how they study and engage in dialogue with tutors about this. This follow-up project focuses on the implementation of THERMOS in the study programs by means of further development of the dashboard with feedback and reflection assignments for tutors, in order to provide better support and guidance for students.
Project leader: Marieke van der Schaaf

In the USO project 'Intercultural Competences for Utrecht University (ICUU)' experience and knowledge have been gained with developing and providing IC education to students, teachers and education staff. This proposal describes an implementation project, in which education and materials from the ICUU project will be further developed and implemented for the study programs BMW, GNK and DGK. In line with the ICUU project, the goal of this project is to increase the IC of three target groups (students, teachers, educational staff) by (1) defining learning objectives, (2) developing and implementing education and (3) ensuring that the education is embedded in the existing educational offering. The new insights from this implementation project will be made more broadly applicable to other faculties.
Project leader: Conny Seeleman

In the ongoing Select-UU project, a successful collaboration between the twelve selective UU bachelor's programs has emerged, which has yielded a great deal for the programs involved as well as for UU and beyond. This follow-up project will implement the current approach, as now applied in bachelor's programs, in the master's phase, and offer tools for selection on these skills and in this specific phase of study. The lessons that emerge from this are important for all UU master's programs. The implementation project will also work on the structural embedding of the evaluation of selection procedures and will look at how the context in which candidates perform in a selection procedure can be included in order to further reduce bias in selection procedures.
Project leader: Sebastiaan Steenman