THE PROGRAMME EST

The 1 year (60 European Credits), fully taught in English, masters degree programme Educational Science and Technology at the University of Twente stands out from other education-related degree programmes in the Netherlands for its design-based and evaluation-based approach. The programme teaches how to analyse educational - and training problems in a systematic way and how to design effective and implementable solutions for those problems. The programme broadens and deepens a students research skills. Students learn how to conduct both qualitative and quantitative research, and how to report in scientific articles. Students put all these competences into practice during their individual graduation project. The programme leads to a Master of Science (MSc) degree in Educational Science and Technology.

THE CURRICULUM

The programme is divided into two semesters. The programme consists of courses and a graduation project. In the first part of their programme, students mainly take courses (30 EC’s). In the second part of their programme, students primarily work on their graduation project (30 EC’s) (possibly –depending on their elective courses – in conjunction with some courses).The final project addresses a real-life educational or training problem or research question. Students are challenged to present a solution to this problem or to answer the research question in a scientific and systematic way by studying literature, collecting data and producing sound analyses.

Throughout the programme, students are subject to a continuous attaining of insights and competences via a systematic coupling of research-based theoretical knowledge and working on existing and future professional practice.

The programme embraces two domains:

·	Educational Design and Effectiveness (EDE);

·	Human Resource Development (HRD).

THE COURSES

At the start of the programme, all students take a 10 EC’s core course. This course creates a common knowledge base on both the domain of education and training as well as on scientific design and research methods and techniques.

On the basis of this core course, students then choose four electives (each 5 EC’s) from the set of in total twelve elective courses (6 from the HRD domain and 6 from the education domain). Anticipating to their individual needs and ambitions (and taking into account the actual curricular possibilities and limitations), students choose from the offered elective courses in the HRD context or the education context.

The elective courses in the domain of HRD will deal with topics like:

·	Workplace learning

·	Facilitating learning-on-the-job

·	Leadership and organisational change

·	Implementation of organisational change

·	Research within organisations

·	Designing and evaluating effective HRD interventions

The elective courses in the domain of regular education address issues like:

·	Curriculum innovation and implementation

·	Learning through ICT

·	Assessment of and for learning

·	Teacher learning and development

·	Research in schools

·	Designing and evaluating in an educational context

It is obvious that, depending on contemporary domain-specific developments, the actual topics of the electives may change regularly.

The curriculum outline below illustrates the options for composing individual study trajectories, both for fulltime and parttime students.