Connect with fellow educators, share ideas, and grow together! The Teaching Community enables collaboration, innovation, and supports professional learning.
The UT Teaching Community (UT TC) brings together teachers from across the University of Twente to connect, contribute to coherence in teaching innovation efforts, and support evidence-informed educational development. This university-wide community was initiated to build stronger connections among educators, promote collaboration across faculties, and make space for inspiration and innovation. The community is co-funded by the 4TU.CEE and is developed in close collaboration with CELT.
- Organize inspiration lunch meetings throughout the year to exchange ideas, practices, and insights
- Encourage collaboration and co-creation across departments and disciplines
- Support teaching innovation projects, co-funded by 4TU.CEE
Previous events
On Wednesday the 19th of April 2023, a UT Teaching Community inspiration lunch took place in DesignLab - IDEATE. The event was combined with the Centre for Engineering Education spring event. Among others, an interesting variety of innovation projects on digitalization (e.g., blended learning, learning analytics) and Challenge-based Learning (CBL), were presented. Ongoing CEE projects were also invited to present here. In addition, explicit attention was given to recognizing and rewarding.
A walk-by poster presentation format was used. After a brief plenary introduction by the Teaching Community team, the posters were presented so that informal talks and knowledge exchange could be stimulated in a relaxed atmosphere.
On the 30th of November 2022, the UT Teaching Community hosted a lunch session on Recognizing & Rewarding teaching and to celebrate the Top Programme Status, awarded to five programmes at the UT. The UT Teaching Community is coordinated by Robin de Graaf and Cindy Poortman and offers informal and inspirational meetings with lunch, where people can feel connected and share ideas.
The lunch meeting attracted a lot of attention as a diverse group of more than 60 teachers, (vice-)deans, Programme Directors, support staff, HR, S&P and students were present. During the meeting, the departments of S&P and HR presented the most recent R&R developments at the UT, including a summary of the Teaching Cultures survey. This survey was just released and monitors teaching culture and status in universities. It compares the findings with global peers (see https://www.teachingcultures.com/).
The participants gave (digital) input on a variety of R&R statements. This input will be used by the UT Teaching Community, S&P and HR to put R&R on the agenda more firmly.
An update from HR and S&P
Annemiek Baars from the Human Resources department presented Ruth Graham’s teaching cultures survey findings for the UT. She showed that efforts to recognize and reward teaching have increased. For instance by investing in a learning environment in which teachers can improve their practices. However, she also explained that there is still room for improvement. Support to giving priority to recognizing and rewarding teaching should still be increased.
Representing the Strategy & Policy department, Marike Poldervaart took the audience on a journey through what she had experienced in the area of recognizing and rewarding teaching at the UT. She mentioned that she was impressed by the many R&R projects and working groups. These include, for example, the Shaping Expert Groups (SEGs) and the creation of a talent development map, which can form the basis for the adjustment of HR-instruments from recruitment until retirement.
Tanya Bondarouk, sponsoring dean of the Shaping Expert Group Individuals and Teams (and dean of the faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences), elaborated on the career development model, developed by the recognizing and rewarding team, that distinguishes between ways to make an impact as UT staff, i.e., through research, teaching, academic citizenship behaviour and team work.
Input from the audience
Introducing an interactive element, Robin de Graaf, assistant professor in the faculty of Engineering Technology, gathered input from the audience by asking to vote on statements such as: “What should leaders do to show strong commitment for R&R?” and “The new R&R policy will make career development more likely for me”. Open answers were also collected. Almost all teachers agreed with the statement that the UT should strongly stimulate ongoing pedagogical training and development after UTQ. Many teachers mentioned they need time, support, and flexibility/adaptation to personal needs for this. True commitment from leaders also pointed to facilitation (in time), and setting teaching career goals in FJUT meetings. Supporting promotion also based on teaching was often mentioned. Regarding the most recent R&R policy, several people agreed that this would help their teaching careers, but most were of the opinion that policy could still be made more concrete. To the question what more participants would like to share, several reported that meetings like this helped. The debate and awareness are important, or to quote one of the participants: “This needs bottom up and top down approaches and prioritising”. There was discussion about the clarity and concreteness of what impact means in teaching and the extent to which this would, in practice, be followed-up by leaders and HR.
Finally, Tom Veldkamp, Rector Magnificus, challenged the participants to take self-directed learning into the domain of recognizing and rewarding teaching. “You are in charge, what do you want to achieve and what impact do you want to make?” According to Veldkamp, the ‘tick-the-box’ approach is not the way to go.
Top Programmes
During the meeting, also the Top Programmes at the UT were celebrated. On the basis of a survey on student satisfaction, the ‘Top Programme Status’ predicate is awarded to programmes realising the highest level of student satisfaction in the country. This year, five bachelor programmes are awarded: Applied Mathematics, ATLAS, Communication Sciences, Industrial Engineering and Management, and Applied Physics. What these programmes have in common is a good relationship between students and teachers and a sense of community (see also https://www.utwente.nl/en/news/2022/11/294778/university-of-twente-maintains-strong-position-in-keuzegids-universiteiten).
Follow-up activity
The UT Teaching Community, co-funded by the Centre for Engineering Education, is maintaining R&R as one of their priorities, also by appointing Chantal Scholten (CELT) as the Teaching Community manager with R&R as an important focus. Chantal will join the Teaching Community from March 2023. We are very much aware of the important relation between teacher professional development initiatives and recognizing and rewarding teaching. We are looking forward to providing further input in this respect.
What is an Educational Community?
An educational community is a group of people who share a common interest in certain educational topics and engage in regular interaction and collaboration to learn and grow professionally. The following frameworks highlight core principles that shape sustained educational communities in higher education.
Sustained Educational Communities in Higher Education
The figure outlines key features and types of such communities, emphasising the importance of continuity, collaboration, and shared purpose within educational communities in higher education.
The framework is adapted from Lee & Neff (2004). It shows that people are at the heart of educational communities. Here, community members create the social environment in which knowledge is exchanged and transformed. Thus, knowledge base refers to the repository of information, expertise, and content that a community uses and develops over time. Knowledge process encompasses the processes and activities that lead to the creation, sharing, and application of knowledge within a community, while knowledge infrastructure includes the tools, systems, and technologies that support the creation, sharing, and management of knowledge – ensuring that knowledge is accessible and usable.
Reference: Lee, L. L. & Neff, M. (2004). How information technologies can help build and sustain an organisation's CoP: Spanning the socio-technical divide? In P. Hildreth & C. Kimble (Eds.), Knowledge networks: Innovation through communities of practice, pp. 165-183. IGI Global Scientific Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-59140-200-8.ch015
Educational Communities across the UT
Below is an overview of the educational communities at the University of Twente.
Contact Information
For assistance or inquiries regarding Educational Communities at the University of Twente, or if you don’t see your community listed in the University of Twente Communities Overview, please connect with the CELT Community Expert:
For more information related to the 4TU.CEE collaboration and innovation project opportunities at UT:
