Photo by Christian Dubovan on Unsplash

The UM Research theme on Learning & Innovation invites (junior) academic staff of UM to apply for seed money (between €2,500 and €10,000) to help fund your short-term education research! The aim of this grant is to stimulate (junior) academic staff across UM faculties to conduct research on a topic related to Learning & Innovation. The topics are listed below.

The deadline for submitting the application is 31 October 2022 (17:00). For more details on the requirements, please see the application form.

Download the application form here.

Questions about this call can be directed to learning_innovation@maastrichtuniversity.nl

The Creativity Coaching Trajectory for entrepreneurship tutors is an eight-week program to more effectively support students in the inherently uncertain, ambiguous and oftentimes ‘mysterious’ creative process and to develop students’ creative competencies among other closely-related competencies for sustainability and global citizenship. Tutors will be trained in the creative process and in teaching for creativity with the Habits of Creativity model, which will function as the main framework for the program. The proposed qualitative study will assess the effectiveness of the creativity coaching and provide in-depth insights into how to refine and improve the Creativity Coaching Trajectory before expanding to other courses and faculties.

Curriculum design is at the heart of higher education, as it concerns how and what students learn and how and what staff teach. Yet, designing and implementing a coherent curriculum is complicated. This is the case for programmes that revolve around problem-based learning, with its partly open-ended nature and its emphasis on student-centred learning, but also for interdisciplinary programmes, which require cooperation across disciplinary boundaries. Our research project explores what coordinative practices are used when designing and implementing curricula, to prevent de-alignment and ensure quality control at programme level, a topic that has received only modest attention in academic literature.

Many students have lost control over their learning process and/or career path. Empowering students instead of nursing students, e.g. guidance that aims to develop the required competences instead of the symptoms, is seen as the most effective intervention. However, the concept of empowerment is widely used in fields like management and psychology, but is less used in education more specifically in the one-on-one contacts between student and staff. Therefore, the main aim of this project is to perform a scoping literature on measurement instruments and tools that enhance student empowerment in the context of one-to-one student mentor/advisor contacts. The results of this review can fuel the implementation of interventions that aim to increase the effectiveness of mentoring/advising contacts and is applicable to the whole UM community.

One of the current principles behind learning in HE in general and PBL in specific is contextual or authentic learning. In many curricula students are nowadays confronted with authentic problems. Students and staff feel however that there is still a disconnect between HE and society. Students often don’t see the meaning and relevance of what they are learning even when being confronted with problems or cases. We see different innovation initiatives in which learning in HE is (re-)connected with society within our own university but also worldwide. These innovative learnings arrangements fit with imagining the future of HE and PBL in which we learn alongside others outside the academy. Arrangements in which we bring “the wilderness in HE” or enhance “learning in the wild” instead of applying one-size-fits-all approaches. The ultimate aim is to enhance students and staff autonomous motivation, their well-being, and better prepare students to become adaptive experts who are not only able to use their knowledge effectively and efficiently, but also have learnt to flexibly use their knowledge, students who are able to respond to novel complex unpredictable societal challenges. We will use the seed money for three purposes: 1) to analyze the current literature on authentic learning arrangements in which HE connects with society, 2) to explore students, staff members’, local business and community representatives perceptions about the main ingredients of current initiatives within our university, their opportunities and barriers, and 3) to develop a scenario for authentic learning in the wild, specifying its main ingredients as well as its potential opportunities and barriers as a tool for creating a shared understanding and way of thinking on how to enhance authentic learning arrangements in which HE and society are (re-)connected.

Photo by Christian Dubovan on Unsplash

The UM Taskforce on Learning & Innovation invites you to apply for seed money (between €2,500 and €10,000) to help fund your short-term research! The aim of this grant is to stimulate academic staff across UM faculties to collaborate and conduct research on a topic related to learning and innovation here at the UM. The deadline for submitting the application is 15 October 2021 (17:00). For more details on the handful of requirements, please see the application form.

Download the application form here.

Questions about this call can be directed to learning_innovation@maastrichtuniversity.nl