Recognition and Rewards

The TDM is a first practical guide to assessing talents on impact based indicators, founded on the principles of recognition and Rewards. It integrates UFO profiles, Twente Manifesto, the model of Graham and ideas of COARA and DORA agreements.

Rewarding and Recognising Teaching is high on the agenda both nationally and within the University of Twente. Recently, people from various sections of the UT have actively contributed ideas in working groups for the practical implementation of rewarding and recognising education as part of career development. This group initiated the experiment to use an ‘Impact Narrative’ for promotions in education. The purpose of the Impact Narrative experiment is to provide more practical tools for rewarding and recognising education.

Impact Narrative is a description of your impact on education at several levels (from student-level to university-level) using the University of Twente Teaching Framework. In the Impact Narrative, the candidate describes his or her plans for future impact in education related to the promotion criteria, with the objective of being promoted in a timeframe of 2-3 years. The Impact Narrative can be the basis for a constructive discussion between the candidate and the evaluation committee about this impact, complementary to the (regular) quantitative measures of educational output.

The Teaching Cultures Survey is a global survey, looking to understand how the status of teaching and learning is viewed by the academic community. Three cross-section surveys are being undertaken in all (2019, 2022, 2024). The survey is undertaken as a collaboration between the participating institutions and Advancing Teaching, a global initiative focused on improving the reward of university teaching. The results of this survey gives us important information about our own teaching culture at the UT and can help us create a balance between research and teaching that does justice to all talents and efforts.

On Teusday 12 September about 80 UT'ers came to Langezijds to speak about Recognition & rewards. Have a look at the aftermovie to get a feel of the afternoon. And make a note in your agenda. The third talk show will take place on June 19.

In the first Talk show on Recognition and Rewards students and UT staff were invited to discuss the desired situation and the concrete actions that are needed to bring Recogniotion and Rewards from paper to practice. The event had the form of a 'talk-show'. Led by Roderick van Grieken (the Netherlands Debate Institute), the following propositions were presented:

1) Assessments should only be done on a team level
2) The recognition and rewarding method will guarantee a top 10 position for UT by 2030
3) 20% of free space should be included in all curricula at UT 
4) Rules and regulations are the biggest obstacles in implementing recognition and rewards
5) Leadership development is primarily a responsibility of the individual, not the university

The three bold statements were chosen for in-depth discussion.

Subsequently, one group was challenged to defend that proposition, another group – argued against it, while the third group was challenged to extract from the discussion the advice for concrete practices at UT. We heard different voices. Roles were rotated, so everyone got a role mentioned above.

Important takeaways were: Recognition and Rewards is alive, there is space for different opinions, and there is work to be done on how to proceed further. Based on the three chosen statements, it could be concluded that the themes to which the University of Twente should prioritise are known. The most important takeaway is that open discussion contributes to the further development of Recognition and Rewards. That may be stating the obvious, but the absence of a 'contrary voice' would be worrying. The call to repeat the event has been heard.