Well, the budget cuts. Conversations about them are happening all over campus, the consequences are slowly becoming clear. With these cuts to education and the educational organization, educational innovation is also put under pressure, almost directly. Then it is tempting to note what is all wrong with these cuts, that we should just try to let everything be as it always has been. Or another tone: never waste a good crisis, finally a good time to make a clean sweep.
On the second-to-last day of January we celebrated (with quite a few of you) the lustrum of the Radboud Teaching and Learning Centre. Such a milestone is of course a good time to take a look back at what has happened in those years. So right along with the news of budget cuts, we were forced to take a look at our successes. We started looking at what made a big impact and what exactly worked well to help teachers develop themselves, their teaching and their students. In the words of the Educational Vision, looking for a more concrete answer to how the TLC has been contributing to a stimulating, welcoming, connecting educational environment at our university since 2020. The result was a beautiful, creatively designed magazine that expresses on all fronts how we from the TLC are moving our education forward.
In the magazine you can see, for example, how many voucher projects we have made possible (currently: 56 educational innovation developments or research projects) and what the results are: innovative forms of education, awarded Comenius projects, interfaculty collaborations, research publications on educational innovations in various disciplines. In our magazine, our ambassadors, 'friends' and voucher alumni once again list what they consider important in education and how they like to shape it. The current core team of the TLC was even allowed to briefly dream about our ideal educational picture of the future.
Of course, these vouchers are just the tip of a large, education-developing iceberg on our campus. But what has become especially visible is that, in general, we can be proud of how we are doing work on good education.
Now, I understand that not everyone is going to put together a personal magazine. But, maybe in these times of education under pressure, we can challenge ourselves (or each other, even better) to get past our selective perceptions. What are we not seeing because we are not looking at it? Could it be that we are looking in the direction of what we want to see? How can we look for what we don't usually see?
Go crazy: start from what an alternative ideal situation might look like. What is needed for that, how can we realize it? And yes, I also know it is tempting here to immediately dismiss everything with a family of bears on the road: 'can't, shouldn't, can't'. The golden rule of brainstorming is.
And who knows, maybe you and a colleague will come up with inspiring new ideas for our education of the future. Be very happy to share them with us, no matter how unrealistic those ideas may seem now. Discuss education with us, come visit us in our lounge on Thursdays. Because educational development and innovative ideas do not come from above or below, but from within.
