Teaching Community

On 2^nd of April 2026, there was an inspirational lunchmeeting at the Learning and Teaching Lab about Neurodivergency. A plenary introduction was given by Devota Okonga-Halman (PhD about Neurodivergency in Higher Education) and Chrissa Manoli (CELT). After that there was some discussion about what you can do in practice with the information. The powerpoint used you can find here and worksheet here

In six different themetables we were discussing some ideas for the future of the Teaching Community. The results you can find here

On Thursday December 12th, from 12:15-13:30 (IDEATE room in Designlab), the UT Teaching Community organised an inspirational lunch meeting about AI in Education with Kim Schildkamp, Robin van Emmerloot and Raisa van der Vegt. A plenary introduction to this theme is given by two presentations. 

This is the programme for the Week of Education 2024 edition of the Teaching Community CEE/4TU lunch

- Assements in CBL (Frank van den Berg)

- Support from CELT  (Adina Imanbayeva)

- Stakeholders in CBL (Raymond Loohuis)

- CBL and Skills in the master CEM (Robin de Graaf)

- Evaluation on CBL/ inbedded in programme (Heidi Muijzer-Witteveen )

- Student engagement in the CBL process (Ryan Wakkamiya)

On Wednesday 6th of March (IDEATE ROOM in Designlab), The UT Teaching Community organises a an inspirational lunch meeting about ''collaboration in projects''. 

On Tuesday November 28 2023 the UT Teaching Community organised an inspirational lunch meeting about Self-Regulated-Learning (SRL). SRL is defined as ‘an active, constructive process whereby learners set goals for their learning and then attempt to monitor, regulate, and control their cognitions, motivation, and behaviour, guided and constrained by their goals and the contextual features in the environment’ (Pintridge, 2000). A plenary introduction to SRL was given. 

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.

Pictures of the event

Pictures of the event

Pictures of the event

Pictures of the event

Pictures of the event

On the 30^th 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.