Personal and professional development of students

The student can adopt a critical, curious, and ethically responsible attitude in academic education and research that is in line with the norms and values in academia.

This may include:

• Academic orientation: The student can find their way in academia and learns what studying at a university entails, what is expected of them, and becomes familiar with the norms and values in academia.
• Researching: The student can identify a potential research problem, develop and execute a research plan in which all elements of academic research, such as a problem definition, research questions, hypothesis, set-up and data analysis are described in relation to relevant literature.
• Critical thinking: The student can evaluate information objectively, identify assumptions and biases, and make informed judgments.
• Integrity: The student can act with honesty, care, and responsibility, and in accordance with professional standards, adheres to ethical guidelines in research, and presents results truthfully and transparently.
• Philosophy of science: The student can judge and reflect on the nature, methodologies and limits of scientific knowledge, can place scientific practices and claims of one’s discipline in a broader epistemological and societal context, and can evaluate on ethics in science through knowledge of scientificphilosophical movements.   

The student can convey complex ideas, research findings and academic arguments clearly, accurately, and purposefully in both oral and written form, to academic and nonacademic audiences.

This may include:

• Presenting: The student can deliver a clear, convincing, and structured presentation, supported by suitable visual tools and tailored to both the audience and the context, while effectively using non-verbal communication.
• Writing: The student can write a clear, convincing, and structured text, appropriate for the specific goal and target audience, citing relevant sources and using supporting elements (tables, figures and appendices).
• Reading: The student can read, understand and process texts like academic articles and books, both in Dutch and English, or in another language that is relevant to their discipline.
• Giving Feedback: The student can give clear, constructive, and specific feedback to others tailored to the needs of the receiver.
• Receiving Feedback: The student can receive and evaluate feedback in a professional manner, seek clarification if needed, demonstrate understanding, and process feedback into actions. 

The student can search, find, evaluate, select, manage, and communicate scientific (digital) information.

This may include:

• Use of Artificial Intelligence: The student knows how to make critical and responsible use of artificial intelligence technologies to support learning processes and research activities, considering ethical, methodological, and scientific principles.
• Data literacy: The student can apply appropriate methods and techniques to mine, collect, process, analyse, interpret, and visualise relevant data, putting the results and their presentation in a wider context.
• Privacy and security: The student can ensure data privacy and information security to protect sensitive research data considering ethical, legal, and technological aspects, and is aware of copyright.

The student can take responsibility for their own actions, decisions, and outcomes by setting goals, making plans, and actively acting to achieve them. The student can develop learning strategies, and maintains a healthy balance between study, extracurriculars, and personal time. The student is accountable for their own learning and development and takes steps to continuously improve their skills and knowledge.

This may include:

• Ownership: The student feels responsible and takes ownership over their own actions and development.
• Studying effectively: The student can employ strategies that help them to learn new knowledge and skills effectively.
• Stress- and time management: The student can monitor any existing pressure and can employ pressure-relieving strategies.
• Developing resilience: The student can reflect on their personal needs during setbacks and can resiliently deal with this by developing a growth-mindset. 

The student can observe, analyse, and evaluate personal experiences, feelings, thoughts, and actions to develop alternative behaviour by employing several strategies of reflection.

This may include:

• Self-awareness: The student can reflect on their thoughts, feelings, desires, selfimage and ability to regulate oneself.
• Metacognition: The student can reflect on and direct learning, thinking and reflection strategies.
• Goal-oriented reflection: The student can link reflection to personal and professional goals. 

The student can collaborate effectively in a group by setting shared goals, executing roles and tasks, structuring meetings, and monitoring group processes by employing several strategies of collaboration.

This may include:

• Diversity & inclusion: The student can explain differences in behaviour and communication as related to cultures and values, interact with others, suspend judgment, while being aware of their position and utilising diversity in a study context.
• Taking multiple perspectives: The student can seek, understand and actively use insights from contrasting perspectives.
• Cultural sensitivity: The student can apply intercultural communication by employing an inclusive mindset. 

The student can critically contextualize their discipline within a broader societal framework. This includes understanding the discipline’s contributions to society, reflecting on, and envisioning the role and responsibilities of academics in relation to societal needs and developments.

This may include:

• Ethical dilemmas: The student can identify, assess, explain and judge ethical and societal issues, and implications that may arise. The student can define and discuss their own position and values with well-argued choices, and act upon them.
• Envisioning: The student can formulate long term-oriented visions in a large and future context.
• Academic citizenship: The student is conscious of societal, political and course programme specific developments, is aware of their own role and influence regarding these developments, and the student’s behaviour is co-determined by this.

The student can obtain, maintain, and adapt to employment opportunities that align with evolving labour market demands and changes, while effectively leveraging and developing their own human potential, such as knowledge, skills, attitudes, and experiences, within diverse academic and professional contexts.

This may include:

• Work exploration: The student can actively investigate and evaluate various career paths within their discipline, aligning potential opportunities with their individual qualifications, values, and interests in order to make informed career decisions.
• Self-profiling: The student can strategically present and promote their professional identity. This includes building and sustaining relevant networks, identifying suitable job opportunities, demonstrating alignment between personal competencies and job requirements, and effectively navigating the application process, including résumé writing and job interviews.

The student can connect academic knowledge, research and social responsibility with creative and sustainable solutions to make a positive contribution to society.

This may include:

• Creativity: The student can employ tactics to find out-of-the-box solutions.
• Problem-solving: The student can identify, analyse and evaluate problems, and apply theories and knowledge of their own discipline to find a fitting solution to these problems.  
• Entrepreneurship and design: The student can apply and integrate concepts and theories to select, test and refine ideas that create value for others in order to develop, design, test and/or implement new solutions (knowledge, product or process).
• Society oriented learning: The student can understand and investigate place, function, concerns and complexities of their discipline within society, and the position and interaction of stakeholders to develop solutions for positive impact.
• Being socially engaged: The student can articulate what their role as a person and as an academic is in their discipline, what role they can and want to play in society, and employ actions to achieve this.
• System Thinking: The student can reflect on the interconnection of events and actors, discern systems and subsystems and design a meaningful course of action.