Information for lecturers
The Radboud Honours Academy is always on the lookout for lecturers who want to look beyond the regular curriculum. Would you like to provide interdisciplinary teaching, explore a topic in depth with motivated students or be involved in educational innovation? If this sounds like you, read on!
As a lecturer, you may feel that the existing curriculum doesn’t always allow for an adequate scope to respond to current developments, or to experiment with new teaching methods such as think tanks and studios. At the Radboud Honours Academy, you’ll find every opportunity to do this! You can then take the experience you have gained and further develop and shape your own teaching.
The small-scale nature of the Honours education allows students and lecturers to work together in new ways. This often involves small groups, where students help shape the programme and where students and lecturers learn from one other.
The Honours Academy offers students a range of options, which vary in intensity and purpose. The lecturer's role is also different for each mode of instruction. These are explained below.
Curious about the experiences of Honours teachers and students? Listen to their stories (in Dutch), or read in this booklet (pdf, 2,5 MB) how teaching outside the curriculum can boost your teaching skills.
Honours programmes
Honours programmes are intended for students who wish to spend longer on their educational development. There are thirteen such programmes in all for first-year, Bachelor’s and Master’s students. The programmes fall into two categories: faculty Honours programmes and university-wide Honours programmes. The role of the lecturer differs according to the programme. In most faculty programmes, you will explore a topic in depth and build an intensive master-apprentice relationship with your students. In the university-wide programmes, you will encourage your students to adopt a broad approach and to look beyond their own discipline.
All Honours programmes are more firmly based on students’ research questions and initiative than in regular education. Interaction between students and lecturers is an important part of the Honours education. You don’t just teach; you are also a coach who helps students to direct their own personal development.
The Honours Academy supports lecturers through peer support, inspiration sessions and training. You can then also apply successful modes of instruction developed in the Honours programme to your own teaching.
Would you like to contribute to one of our honours programmes? Please contact the relevant programme director for more information.
Honours labs
In addition to the one- and two-year Honours programmes, the Honours Academy also offers Honours labs. These are short, experimental projects, in which students work for weeks or months on an interdisciplinary theme of a topical nature. Unlike most components of Honours programmes, Honours labs have no fixed format. As a lecturer, you will enjoy the freedom to experiment with new modes of instruction.
Your role as a lecturer in an Honours lab is similar to that in the Honours programmes; you will always work with small groups of students and you will have a primarily coaching role. You will also be closely involved in the development of teaching, with your own ideas about education as the point of departure. Together with programme coordinators at the Honours Academy and/or other (external) experts, you will then develop these ideas further to create an inspirational Honours lab.
If you have an innovative idea about teaching that you would like to develop and try out with motivated students? Take a look at our call for teachers, or contact Floor Binkhorst, floor.binkhorst@ru.nl.