Impact on teaching, research and staff development
The TLC voucher programme helps lecturers to put educational ideas into practice and learn from them in an accessible way. With a voucher of up to €10,000, you are given the freedom to experiment, develop and learn. In this way, we strengthen education in terms of both content and teaching methods, and contribute to Radboud University’s educational vision. In addition, you can use the vouchers to make existing project results more widely accessible or to focus specifically on raising awareness of sustainability issues in education.
In short: the vouchers not only offer you support in realising your ideas but also provide an opportunity to further promote your passion for education.
From augmented reality to communities of practice and peer feedback in education
In 2021, Lucas Boer and Dylan Henssen, affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine, began their voucher project: Anatomy Teaching with Extended Reality. They developed an augmented reality application that creates 3D models of human embryos and foetuses. The app was designed to enhance the study of embryology and teratology by providing students with interactive visualisations. They then investigated the effect of AR technology on students’ learning outcomes, motivation and cognitive load. In their vlog updates, you can see step by step how they approached their project.
Yvonne van Rossenberg also launched a project in 2021. She investigated whether a Community of Practice (CoP) would foster greater connections between students and whether it would have a positive impact on student motivation. The results showed that a community has various positive effects: for lecturers, the community was an enjoyable way to combine teaching and research, and for students, it was an accessible and interesting way to get acquainted with the world of research. A valuable insight gained from this project is that clear agreements and effective intercultural communication are of great importance in an international project.
How do students experience the feedback process within the programme? What do they consider to be ‘good’ feedback? And what factors prevent them from actually putting the feedback they receive into practice? Lieke Jager explored these questions in her voucher project. She arrived at some valuable insights: students differed greatly in what they understood by ‘good’ feedback. Some preferred reflective feedback that encourages thought, whilst others felt a greater need for concrete feedback that can be applied immediately. The main factors preventing students from acting on feedback were the sheer volume of feedback they received, as well as a lack of time and space to process it. Lieke developed a teaching method to provide students with this space and time.
