Twente Education Model makes studying effective, future-proof and more engaging than ever.
During your bachelor’s, you will be taught according to the unique Twente Education Model (TOM). This way of teaching makes studying more effective, future-proof and also a lot more fun. All of our bachelor’s programmes work with TOM. What makes this particular way of learning and teaching special?
Modules & project-based work
During the first two years of your bachelor's, you follow four modules per year. Each module focuses on a theme which you will explore in depth during lectures, workshops and feedback sessions with your fellow students. You conclude a module with a team project in which you tackle a current problem in society or business.
Your team divides the work and each student is responsible for a project component. You are dependent on each other's output: you understand and are assessed on what your team members have done. In the team, you collaborate with students from other bachelor's programmes. In this way, you learn to look beyond the boundaries of your own field of study and make cross-connections, resulting in surprising solutions. Moreover, you apply scientific theory directly in practice. We call this cross-disciplinary and future-proof education!
Are you a researcher, designer or organiser?
Are you a researcher developing new techniques? Or a designer deploying innovative techniques that will soon be accessible to everyone? Maybe you are a natural-born organiser who makes sure society is willing to use all those techniques and innovations. By working on projects and in constantly changing teams and roles, you will discover where your true strengths lie – professionally and personally. Which is very useful to know if you are looking for a suitable master's programme or job after your bachelor's!
Study points and assessments
Student workload at Dutch universities is expressed in EC, also named ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System), which is widely used throughout the European Union. In the Netherlands, each credit represents 28 hours of work. You need to acquire 60 credits each year.
Your programme assigns fixed numbers of hours to each assignment, project report or exam. In the first year, you need to get at least 45 out of 60 points to be able to continue to the second year.
Each module consists of different tests. How many tests these are and in what form they are taken (written, verbal, report, etc.) varies per programme and module. You will be graded for each module and/ or for parts of the module.
Freedom of choice in your third year
You will graduate in the third year of study. Half of this year consists of electives (with the exception of the Technical Medicine programme) and the other half is devoted to the concluding bachelor's assignment in which you solve a current issue in a scientific way. You could choose to do this for a UT research group, company or (semi)government institution.
'Student-driven learning'
As a student at UT, you have a great deal of influence on your own learning process. When following modules, you are in control and make your own choices in terms of planning and educational activities. What do you need to pay more attention to? What resources do you need? What role will you play in the team project? You will work actively and self-directed. In close consultation with your lecturers, of course, because personal contact and guidance are important to us. This 'student-driven' approach to learning allows you to develop a flexible and entrepreneurial attitude that prepares you better for the job market.
Becoming a T-shaped professional
The job market of the 21st century requires T-shaped professionals: people with both substantive professional knowledge and skills to cooperate with others. Through the Twente Educational Model, you will develop into a T-shaped professional. In each module project, you go into depth (the vertical 'leg' of the T) by exploring a theme from all sides. You will research and experiment and constantly gain new knowledge with the result that you become fully familiar with the topic. At the same time, you work on your skills and competencies (the horizontal 'leg' of the T) because you collaborate intensively with people from other disciplines to arrive at new, surprising insights and designs. So you can look at the situation from your own frame of reference, but also know how to approach it from the frame of reference of other disciplines.