The Comenius grants have been awarded to the following lecturers and educational projects at Radboud University:
Esther Tanck – Get academic education moving!
Students spend a large part of their day sitting down, while prolonged sitting has negative effects on both physical and mental health. Yet physical activity is still scarcely integrated into university education. With the project Get academic education moving!, Esther Tanck, Programme Director of Biomedical Sciences and Professor of Movement Sciences Education at Radboud University, aims to change this. Her goal is to make physical activity a natural part of academic education, starting with the Master’s programme in Biomedical Sciences. The €100,000 Comenius Senior Fellow grant will enable this approach to be further developed, researched, and sustainably embedded in education over a period of 2.5 years.
Read more about Esther Tanck’s project
Bjorn Robroek and Patrick Weigelt – Future-proof ecology education
- Biology education faces a challenge: while more and more species are disappearing worldwide, students are graduating without being able to recognise species or understand the role they play in nature. This is also known as ‘species illiteracy’ and makes it more difficult for the next generation to find solutions to the biodiversity crisis. To help combat species illiteracy, biologists Bjorn Robroek and Patrick Weigelt have been awarded a Comenius Senior Fellowship grant of €100,000 for their project Future-proof ecology education. Their project transforms the way biology is taught at Radboud University. Students build up their knowledge step by step: in the first year, they learn to recognise species, and in later modules they learn to analyse nature and ecological relationships more scientifically. Central to the project is the online platform BotanizeR, which offers each student a personalised learning pathway tailored to their learning objectives.
Read more about Bjorn Robroek and Patrick Weigelt’s project
Four Teaching Fellowships at Radboudumc
In addition to the awards mentioned above, four further innovative teaching projects led by Radboud lecturers working at Radboudumc have been approved. These Teaching Fellowships, worth 50,000 euros, will enable the lecturers to further develop and implement innovative teaching initiatives. The projects focus on a range of themes, including a culture of feedback, virtual reality, science communication and language awareness in medical education.
- In Van evaluatie naar dialoog: verwonder- en verbetergesprekken voor een lerende en veilige opleidingscultuur, Laura Spinnewijn is developing a new approach to encourage reflection and quality improvement within study programmes.
- In Virtual Reality in Basic Life Support-onderwijs, Edward Tan uses virtual reality to enhance CPR training.
- Through the project CO-creatie Tegen Misinformatie: Kritisch Denken en Wetenschapscommunicatie Versterken in Medisch Onderwijs , Jojanneke Huck is working to strengthen students’ critical thinking and science communication skills.
- In addition, in Dichter bij de goede woorden. Poëzie als instrument tot kritisch taalbewustzijn in de opleiding Geneeskunde, Arnold van der Meer explores how poetry can contribute to language awareness and reflection within medical education.
About the Comenius Programme
The Comenius grants form part of the Comenius Programme for Educational Innovation. The Radboud Teaching and Learning Centre supports lecturers with their applications. Would you like to know more about these grants? Read more on the Comenius Programme for Educational Innovation webpage.