Introduction

In the second half of the 1990s the challenges of society and the changing demands the students encountered when starting their careers made us discuss the curriculum with several leading industries in the region. Soon it became clear that we had to start anew. Although at Hogeschool Drenthe we had very good results and we were among the best of the professional universities in the Netherlands, we had to look to the future. Students needed to develop creativity, critical independent thinking, team spirit and a professional attitude.

We decided that the emphasis in teaching-goals had to change from transferring knowledge to teaching students to become competent professionals in their own specialized fields.
This meant more emphasis on stimulating creativity and natural curiosity in the students, on teamwork and co-operative learning in competence-based programmmes.
Instead of learning facts and formulas by heart, the students needed to know how to access useful information.
The role of the teacher had to change to that of a provider of a strong learning environment and a coach for the students and student teams. In that way we tried to make students responsible for their own learning process and more and more independent.

To offer a strong interesting learning environment for the students we developed ‘cases’, complicated multidisciplinary courses centered on situations from industry and society.
Companies like Philips helped us by offering real life examples we could use to develop cases and projects. They have now become part of the curriculum.
By making the students work in small groups they also developed team and leadership skills.

The Project

From 2000 to 2002 I was Project Manager of a governmental educational project. This project involved five educational institutions; our university, two upper secondary schools (science section) and two institutes of technical education. The goal of the project was to reform the curriculum of the partner institutes using the teaching method developed at our university. The project was a success and the results were officially presented during a conference in November 2002.

Basic assumptions for this curriculum reform

Overall goal:

Competence based, problem-centered curriculum that encourages the students to be:

• interested
• active
• curious
• independent
• responsible
• innovative
• critical
• open-minded
• enterprising
• to have a professional attitude

The curriculum is focused on:

• co-operative learning
• problem solving skills
• entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation
• a variety in forms of assessment

How:

• teamwork / multidisciplinary projects (less lectures)
• research / experiments (less classroom based assignments)
• real-life problems (‘cases’)
• lecturer = facilitator and coach
• next to individual written exams, assessment by:
  • tests - individual or team
  • essays – individual or team
  • practical work – individual or team
  • participation

Basic assumptions (continued):

In companies:

• quality of innovation is equal to quality of the learning processes
• manage learning capacity well
• stimulate the creative, flexible side of employees
• anticipate where possible learning is needed
• develop an entrepreneurial culture that allows space to take risks and explore crazy ideas

In education students prepare for an innovative work environment:

• no focus on fast learning and reproduction of facts
• more competition between students
• stimulate entrepreneurship
• set assignments requiring creativity and thinking outside the box