Een portretfoto van Anniek van der Waart en Esmeralda Davidson in het Radboudumc
Een portretfoto van Anniek van der Waart en Esmeralda Davidson in het Radboudumc

A specialisation with coherence and depth for Biomedical Sciences students 

TLC voucher project
Duration
2021 until 2022
Project member(s)
Esmeralda Blaney Davidson , Anniek van der Waart
Project type
Research

Motivation

The Biomedical Sciences master's curriculum consists of a mix of courses from which students can compile their programme. Because students can choose any course at any time, it is not possible to build on knowledge from a previous course, making achieving depth a challenge. How can the coherence between courses be increased without losing the flexibility to also take the courses separately?

Desired solution

Esmeralda and Anniek's research project focuses on developing a curriculum that balances build-up in difficulty with flexibility. How do you tackle this? By mapping essential preconditions for optimising this balance, a programme is created that offers opportunities for in-depth study, but also preserves students' freedom of choice as much as possible.  

Plan of action

Esmeralda and Anniek start their project with an evaluation of the current course offering within the specialisation and the perceived depth and flexibility within it. In doing so, they involve their students, the Master Education Management Team, course coordinators and lecturers. At the same time, they conduct literature research on developing a flexible curriculum with depth and enter into discussions with experts in the field. They will then compile the findings from the evaluation, the literature review and the talks with experts into a report. Finally, Esmeralda and Anniek will work out the further implementation of preconditions in a new curriculum in cooperation with the study programme. 

Funding

This project is funded by a TLC voucher from the Radboud Teaching and Learning Centre. This voucher programme aims to set up projects in the field of educational innovation, lecturer development and educational research.

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