This blog was first published by the FASoS Teaching & Learning Blog on 17 April 2020. One of the few good things about the the need to stay at and work from home, is that we’ve managed to get a lot of work done in the garden. We’ve enlarged one of the borders, planted a tiny forest consisting of native trees, shrubs and herbs, and have started preparations for putting in a wildlife pond. Last week I’ve also finally sowed the first flower and vegetable seeds in the greenhouse. I’ve also started sowing the seeds for my online teaching this period.
I am organising a series of webinars on online teaching and learning and am learning a lot from listening and talking to colleagues. For instance regarding technical issues, such as how to best make use of breakout rooms while being unable to see what happens in them, or how to use screen-sharing to produce collective notes. But also regarding group dynamics, which can be less dynamic due to more limited online attention spans, but which can also be improved due to the increased importance of letting someone finish their contribution. Or regarding the role of the tutor – taking over the note-taking role from students can help to offer much-needed structure. But my own experience has so far been limited. As I wrote before, I am not teaching any tutorials, only lectures and supervision of BA and MA theses. My experience using Zoom for meetings with my BA and MA supervises (and with colleagues) has been quite good. I’ve utilised breakout rooms, screen sharing and the whiteboard to support discussions and allow detailed discussions. As always, some students are more engaged than others, but interestingly enough these divisions mirror students’ normal in-class behaviour. The screen doesn’t seem to matter too much here. Even though I will not be teaching any tutorials, I’ve nevertheless asked two colleagues – Marisa Mori and Mirko Reithler – if I could join one of their online tutorials. I want to experience online tutorials for two reasons. First, to see how things are going – how students and colleagues translate PBL to an online environment – and to learn from Marisa and Mirko. Second, since it may be possible that online teaching and learning continues into the next academic year, I might as well be prepared. But even when normality resumes as of September, I expect to still be inspired to rethink some of my regular teaching. I’m also going to join online lectures of two other colleagues – Andreea Nastase and Anna Herranz-Surrallés – both in our BA-level EU politics course. Here my interest is more evident, as I have to give a couple of lectures in May. One of these lectures will be on Euroscepticism and will be in the same EU politics course. I’m currently considering doing a mixture of knowledge clips and/or podcasts plus online discussions, not that different from your normal flipped classroom. For two other lectures in our BA European Studies mentor programme I am considering making them completely asynchronous. These are lectures in which colleagues and myself present BA students with some need-to-know information about their upcoming second or third year and some of the important choices to be made (e.g. concerning elective courses, Erasmus exchange, internship). Here, we’re probably going to update existing slides and accompany them with short matter-of-fact videos from colleagues and experience videos from senior students, plus a short instruction on how to best view this material. For our third-years we’d normally do a final session in which we review the whole BA. I’m not yet quite sure what to do here. Yet, given that my experience using Zoom for larger groups (staff webinars) has been rather good, I suspect that we’ll reenact a more standard think-pair-share setting. So, the seeds are sown. But obviously additional efforts are needed to make sure that they’ll germinate. I’m seeing some first succes in the greenhouse; now to translate this to my online teaching.
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This blog was first posted by the FASoS Teaching & Learning Blog on 2 April 2020. We are now in week 3 of online teaching and learning here in Maastricht. Last week I posted some first reflections on my own experience so far, and I want to come back to this again. But I want to start with the rise of the online teacher. Make no mistake, I am not referring to myself – or, better, not just to myself. Instead, what I am referring to is the immense commitment and motivation of academic staff (and students!) to make the best of these rather confusing times. And not just your normal teaching and learning crowd, but virtually everyone I talk to via Skype or Zoom or correspond with over email or WhatsApp. Let me start by illustrating this by the fact that our first ever FASoS webinar on online teaching and learning, which took place yesterday, was attended by just over 40 (!) colleagues from all ranks of our faculty (and some from beyond). Notwithstanding the usual challenges, Zoom worked quite well and everyone was willing to learn and engage in sharing experience. Obviously, some rules had to be set from the start (inspired by our MA ES colleagues, but also for instance by these useful guidelines), but we had stimulating discussions in groups of five, followed by a plenary debate, plus input from experts. But when I refer to the rise of the online teacher, I am also referring to the social media flurry. So many colleagues are sharing interesting links or their own experience (check out Rachel Dickson’s blog on connecting with students online); on making online teaching and learning work, but also on making life work (something that is certainly not to be underestimated either). And thankfully there are also creative souls who make us laugh, such as my friend and colleague and poet Paul Stephenson, whose quatrains and limericks are spot on! This is all truly inspirational. And if we can keep this momentum going when ‘normal’ teaching resumes, at least one good thing will have come out of these confusing times. Meanwhile, I’m slowly finding a new daily focus and routine. On a normal day, I would walk to the faculty, grab a coffee halfway, and arrive 20 minutes after having left home. Now I go for a 30-minute walk before breakfast, which is always very relaxing. With a small nature reserve just next door and Spring upon us, it’s also a very rewarding time for going for a walk. Fortunately, I’m also still able to go for a run and ride my race bike. In a more radical move – for someone who’s a bit of a news junkie – I’ve temporarily stopped following most of the news. Not because I don’t care – because I do; but because it is quite depressing, which really doesn’t help right now. The good thing is that I have a bit more time for other stuff, such as working on an alternative skill set. I’ve also started listening to some new podcasts. Call me boring, but I’ve really gotten into Gardens, Weeds & Words by Andrew Timothy O’Brien (he and his guests discuss gardening and the arts, identity, race… inspirational stuff!).
Meetings with students and colleagues continue like before. Here too it is great to see that most people are patient and willing to help and share experiences. And everyone is always well-prepared and willing to make the best of the meetings that we have. But online meetings continue to be rather exhausting – more so than meetings in the real world, out there. And while email traffic has certainly lessened, most emails either need immediate attention, or a detailed reply (or worse: both). Because of this, focussing on research is a bit trickier than I had hoped it would be (I cannot even imagine what people with kids are going through!). I get some stuff done, but not nearly as much as I wish. But I did finish a revise and resubmit today and I’ve emptied my calendar for next week so I can finally continue work on two papers. It is learning by doing, I guess. Or as my colleague Mirko Reithler put it during yesterday’s webinar, it’s “building the boat while sailing”. This blog was originally published by the FASoS Teaching & Learning Blog on 23 March 2020. It’s been just over a week since Maastricht University decided to move all teaching online. I’ve been lucky because my teaching from last week onwards was going to be centred around individual meetings anyway, so it’s been relatively easy to adapt. Lots of respect to everyone who has already moved teaching to online platforms in the midst of an ongoing period; we can learn so much from your experience! I’ve been working from home for a week now. I usually work at home two days a week to focus on my research. And I have a comfortable home office with a view of the garden (which I can also use when the weather allows) and an adjustable desk (allowing me to do some work while standing). Still, this week has been very different from my usual days working from home. For one, all my meetings have gone through Skype or Zoom, without any problems, including my online student ‘drop-in’ hour. All students I spoke to (nearly 20 in two days time) had a working connection, which in most cases included video. I asked all of my students to carefully prepare; my Research Master students, in particular, did a great job doing so. All my students also were a bit apprehensive about this new challenge – one of the reasons why we drafted tips for students. But all of them were healthy too, as were their parents, which is most important. Communication with colleagues went through email, Skype or Zoom. This is challenging for some colleagues; some have kids running through the house, and all kinds of other stuff to be taking into account. As far as email is concerned, I’m getting less emails! And most people who do email, sent shorter messages. Perhaps we can learn from this that meeting face-to-face (in real life or in cyberspace) is more efficient than endless email conversations? All of this has been rather tiring, though, and I’ve been absolutely knackered at the end of a series of online meetings; something John also mentioned in his recent post on providing individual feedback via Skype. This – and the simple fact that all of this takes time getting used to – has gone at the expense of research, but I hope to catch up this week. But I sense a lot of sympathy and understanding towards each other. And we can use technology to still do things together, like watching an online movie to support your local independent cinema or listening to the same Spotify playlist, like my friend Afke and I were doing on Thursday. In addition to trying to keep up with normal work, I’ve also been introducing myself to online teaching, because let’s face it: for most of us this is something we have never done before. Yes, I’ve had Skype meetings before. I’ve also once designed a short, narrated PowerPoint lecture. But this is different. We cannot just record a lecture or do a group meeting like we would normally do. And did you ever consider the difference between asynchronous and synchronous activities? I certainly did not.
Emilie’s blog on using videos in teaching was a great starting point, my friends from the Active Learning in Political Science Blog have published lots of insightful posts, and I have enjoyed following the first webinars offered by the Dutch Open University. While I’m still far from knowing exactly how to shape online teaching and learning, here are a few takeaways that I will keep in mind during the next couple of weeks and months.
Challenging, I know, but I’ve decided to seize the opportunity to try developing some novel teaching material. And, really, my only obstacle right now is that I’m sometimes unable to grind coffee beans because my partner is in an online meeting at the kitchen table. So, I’ll manage. No, we’ll manage together; we can do this! Written with Afke Groen and previously published by Active Learning in Political Science on 13 February 2020. We are going to be honest with you from the outset: this blog is not concerned with our teaching experience, but rather with an ongoing research project that we are working on with our colleague Johan Adriaensen and our student assistant Caterina Pozzi (both also Maastricht University). And it gets worse: this is a blog that ends with a cry for help.
We are working on a research project studying undergraduate curriculum design in European Studies, International Relations and Political Science. Surprisingly, there is relatively little research on actual curriculum design within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, in particular when it comes to such broad fields. Sure, there has been a debate about what curriculums in these fields should look like. Some of our colleagues have, for instance, asked whether there is, or should be, such a thing as a core curriculum in European Studies, while others have looked at interdisciplinarity in the field of Politics. Similarly, at the policy level there have been some attempts to flesh out benchmarks and standards in European Studies, and International Relations and Politics. But what is missing is a thorough attempt to build a database of programmes in European Studies, International Relations and Politics, and to compare the characteristics of these programmes. This is where our ongoing research project comes in. The project builds on previous work by Johan and us, published in the Journal of Contemporary European Studies and European Political Science (in production). Both articles concern the training and monitoring of generic skills in active learning environments. Our new project takes a broader perspective on skills and methods in curriculum design. We conduct a meta-study of undergraduate programmes offered by the member institutions of APSA, ECPR and UACES. We particularly explore three key themes: (1) the teaching of skills, practical experience and employability; (2) the degree of interdisciplinarity; and (3) the flexibility and coherence of the programme. All in all, we hope to provide (1) a unique and comprehensive database of how curricula are organised in practice. On this basis, (2) we will distinguish various types of curriculums and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages. Our final objective is to (3) formulate best practices for university teachers and programme developers. As such, the database also promises to be a useful resource for university policies, in particular in light of challenges such as the constantly changing objects of study in European Studies, International Relations and Politics and an increasingly diverse and international student body. Although we are still in the phase of gathering data, we can already share a couple of interesting observations with you. For one, while some universitiesseem to think that programmes in European Studies, Politics and International Relations are no longer really necessary, it is good to see that this has certainly not meant that future students cannot choose from a wide array of such programmes. Indeed, the curriculums that we have coded so far look quite different. For instance, our own BA in European Studies seems to pay much more specific attention to methods and skills development through separate courses (and many of them). Another striking difference between programmes, is the extent of choice offered to students; while some programmes consist of large, compulsory courses mostly, others include a wide array of electives or ‘tracks’ from diverse fields of studies (sometimes with over 100 or even 200 optional courses!). The latter is also one of our main challenges: it is not always clear what exactly constitutes a programme’s curriculum. Often, the respective websites are not very clear – generally university websites are rather dense – and it is impossible to find core programme documents that might help us here. This is particularly the case for Eastern European and US programmes, which often revolve around a major/minor set-up. Hence, we need your help! If you are based at a university and/or are teaching in a programme that is a member of APSA, ECPR and UACES, your input would be very welcome. If there is any documentation that you think might help us code Eastern European and US programmes, we would be very grateful if you could send it to [email protected]. We do offer something in return. First, we will keep you posted through Twitter and blogs. Second, we hope to organise panels and workshops on curriculum design at conferences, such as during this year’s European Teaching & Learning Conference in Amsterdam. If you would like to contribute to such get-togethers, do let us know. Finally, our aim is to eventually provide colleagues with access to our database, starting with those of you who help us move the project forward! This blog was originally published by the DCU Brexit Blog on 12 December 2019. Finally. Jean-Claude Juncker has bid us ‘au revoir’ via his own edition of the Politico Playbook and the new Von der Leyen Commission started earlier this month. Things didn’t go as smoothly as some had hoped, with the European Parliament blocking three of the candidate Commissioners (László Trócsányi, Hungary; Rovana Plumb, Romania; Sylvie Goulard, France). But VDL and her team have set to work – as have new European Council president Charles Michel and new European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde.
A few months back I reflected on the incoming European Commission in another DCU Brexit post. The game of musical chairs has gone at the expense of the much-hoped gender balance in the VDL Commission – although, as this picture tweeted by Charles Michel shows, EU leadership has generally become quite a bit more balanced! Another difference is that the Commission is no longer ‘Protecting our European Way of Life’ but rather ‘Promoting’ it. Although we still don’t know what ‘Our European Way of Life’ is exactly, the Commission’s website does raise questions about how ‘fundamental rights’ and ‘strong borders’ will be combined. But let’s give VDL and her team a chance and, instead, look at what will be coming her way in the near future. Here are three feature films coming to European cinemas soon! 1. Spitzenkandidaten, Part Deux One issue that I wrote about in more detail in my previous DCU post, concerned the EU’s democratic nature and the need for treaty changes. So, what can we expect from the Commission here? Not too much, probably, as the member states will be in the lead. But the recent Franco-German non-paper on the EU’s future suggests that discussions will certainly affect future Commissions. The document refers to the need “to promote democracy and European values and to ensure a more efficient functioning of the Union and its Institutions.” Vintage back to the future rhetoric. But interestingly, the paper also directly refers to “transnational lists and lead candidate system”. This suggests that the Parliament’s much-loved Spitzenkandidaten system seems to have now been accepted by Macron and Merkel as the way forward. And that new voting arrangements for European elections may even be on the agenda. Can’t wait until the 2024 European elections! 2. Climate Wars: The Return of the Jedi This week the new (and returning) executive vice-President of the Commission, Frans Timmermans, will present the contours of the Union’s new Green Deal to the European Parliament. Given that Parliament has declared a state of climate emergency, questions will certainly be asked. Some of the ideas that have made it to European media, have already been heavily criticised by environmental groups. Meanwhile, European businesses and EU leaders – the latter being confronted with protests against environmental legislation at home – may want plans to be less ambitious. Finding a compromise between these different interests will be a mammoth task and an important one at that. But, given that Frans Timmermans has taken on the beard of a wise Jedi Knight, the force may be strong with this one. Script and soundtrack have already been leaked! 3. Monty Python and the Holy Brexit The British elections are just around the corner. And perhaps Brexit is too. The Conservatives are in the lead in the opinion polls, though this does not necessarily mean that they will win a majority of seats. Labour would hold a new referendum on Brexit, should they win the elections, whereas the LibDems would revoke Article 50 to stop Brexit altogether. Neither of them really stands a chance of gaining a majority, though, but being part of a coalition would also put Brexit into question. If Boris’ Conservatives win a majority, the British leaving the EU will be a matter of weeks. But even if Boris takes the win and Britain leaves the EU, this will only be the start of determining what their future relationship will look like. And will the EU27 remain as unified when having to negotiate a trade deal with the UK? And if Boris doesn’t win, we may be back to where we were a few months back. And the months before that. And last year… So, if you’re in the Commission, always look on the bright side of life: you’ll still be talking about EU-UK for quite a while! Brexit, climate change, the future of the EU? It’s back to the future with the new Commission, with three challenges that are likely to stay. Turns out that Jean-Claude Juncker truly understands European politics best: rather than saying ‘goodbye’, we should say ‘au revoir’. This post was originally published by Active Learning in Political Science on 6 December 2019. I’ve always considered myself an approachable teacher; someone students can come to with questions or worries or just for a talk. And from what I hear, I amconsidered to be approachable. Still, I am noticing something that worries me. I have been having open office for about 9 years now, but fewer students have been showing up. Weeks go by when no one comes, even in periods when I am teaching and coordinating courses. I know that I am not the first one raising this issue. It is even the topic of students’ research! But I still believe that students can learn from meeting with us for input and feedback, whether this concerns a relatively simple question or my assessment of their paper. So, why does no one come and talk to me anymore? Turnout during open office hours again was low during the first weeks of this year, when I coordinated and taught a first-year course on academic research and writing. At the end, students write a short paper. These are randomly distributed among teaching staff, myself plus 10 other colleagues – together we teach 25 problem-based learning groups of about 12 students. As soon as results are out, all students, whether they have failed or passed, are invited to meet with the person who marked their paper to discuss the assessment during scheduled open office hours. This year I asked colleagues to inform me about the number of students that had shown up. The table below shows the data for those who failed the course. Interestingly one colleague had to do her open office hours via Skype; no less than 7 out of 9 students showed up. Yet, there is some research that suggests that using technology does not make a huge difference. Why did so few students show up?
I decided to ask some simple questions to the students themselves during a session in our mentor programme. The approximately 100 students who attended (out of nearly 300) might not be representative of the group of students that does not turn up in my office. But I still learned something interesting. Of the 86 students completing questions via an online survey tool, 36 had failed the course and 29 had attended the open office hours. Those who attended, generally did so to get clarification regarding their paper’s assessment. Of those who did not attend, some simply stated that they passed the course and saw no need to discuss the feedback. Others referred to having been sick, stressed and/or busy with the new courses – when asked, quite a few of these students did not write to staff to ask for another appointment. Asked why they thought others had not come, some answered that these must be lazy students or that they missed motivation because they knew what they had done wrong. But quite a few answers touched upon something that we might all too easily overlook, namely students’ expectations regarding feedback opportunities. These answers did not just concern not knowing what to do with feedback. For instance, one student wrote that students who did not show up might be “insecure and/or uncomfortable with getting feedback”. Another student wrote that “you have limited time with the tutors and tutors often have a lot of work and not much time for you”. Could it be that low attendance during open office hours is due to barriers to students’ engagement with feedback or, more generally, a lack of feedback literacy? This is something that I want to explore in more detail. I have already briefly discussed this with our academic writing advisor, and we may want to see whether we can specifically address this issue in a forthcoming curriculum review. But what about solutions for the here and now? There are many ways in which open office are organised, but what works best? One colleague suggested changing times. Admittedly, my open office hours are Wednesdays from 08:30-09:30, but this never was a problem – and the feedback open office hours during the aforementioned course were scheduled in the afternoon. Elsewhere in cyberspace people have been suggesting other solutions, including a rethink of faculty office space. I’d love to squeeze in a couch, but my office is rather tiny. On Twitter someone suggested that the wording ‘open office hours’ is unclear to students and that ‘student drop-in hours’ may make more sense. So, the name plate next to my door now mentions my student drop-in hours and so does the syllabus of an upcoming course. Let’s see what happens. I hope students will come and talk to me again. The door’s open, simply turn up at the stated time! This post was originally published by the DCU Brexit Institute Blog on 3 October 2019. It already seems ages ago that we had the kick-off of the European election campaign here in Maastricht on 29 April. The Maastricht Debate, as it was called, brought together the Spitzenkandidaten of five of the European party groups. The most prominent absentee was EPP Spitzenkandidat Manfred Weber, who attended a birthday party instead. His absence did lead to speculation as to whether or not this was the real reason for his absence, one of the suggestions put forward being that this may be a sign of the EPP hoping to demote the Spitzenkandidaten system.
Nearly five months later and the Spitzenkandidaten system indeed seems to be more death than alive. French President Macron’s opposition to the system in absence of transnational lists was important, even though Europe’s leaders have never been a fan of the idea. But the new Commission President-elect, Ursula von der Leyen (VDL), at least is a member of the biggest party group, the EPP. Earlier this month VDL presented the proposed team of Commissioners and their portfolios. The European Parliament is now gearing up for its hearings of the European Commission nominees, starting on Monday 30 September. The fact that the number of women in the Commission has gone up so substantially – from 8 to 13 – certainly is great news. But the composition of the new Commission has already led to some debate and commentators are speculating on who will not survive the hearings in Parliament. Questions have also been raised about what will happen to the Commission’s tough stance on the rule of law in Hungary and Poland when Frans Timmermans is no longer in charge. And then there are the lofty and sometimes unclear titles of some of the portfolios, such as ‘An Economy that Works for People’, ‘Democracy and Demography’, ‘International Partnerships’ and, of course, the new post of Commissioner for ‘Protecting our European Way of Life’. These questions and issues are important, and we should applaud the fact that the European Parliament takes its democratic duty seriously and will be critically assessing these questions and issues during its hearings of the Commission candidates. But what seems to be less debated right now, but arguably has become more important than ever, are questions about the future of Europe. In particular, although the expected Eurosceptic surge was more modest than many had anticipated and election turn-out has gone up, questions about Europe’s democratic arrangements remain relevant. If and when the debate about the future of the EU continues, two questions regarding its institutional set-up need to be addressed. The first concerns the role and composition of the European Commission. Is the Commission meant to be a bureaucratic actor, the composition of which should not depend on election outcomes? Or should it become a nascent European government, in which case its composition should depend on those elections? Linked to this is the matter of the size of the Commission, which is not a new question at all, but one that deserves further discussion given that some of the new posts again seem to amount to a rather limited job description. The second question concerns the European elections themselves. Whether or not the Commission is seen as a bureaucratic or a political actor, isn’t it time that transnational election lists finally become reality? While citizens would still be able to elect national politicians, transnational lists might push politicians to move beyond their national focus, which would deepen the transnational European public sphere. What’s more, it might further increase the quality of MEPs, because we could vote for more experienced politicians – former prime ministers even – when our national political parties choose to nominate less experienced or frankly outlandish candidates. However important, right now it doesn’t seem that these issues will be addressed in the short run. If only because some fear that they will open a box of pandora when it comes to EU reform. But there also still is this one issue that hasn’t been resolved yet (and that I’ve managed to avoid so far): Brexit. Until Brexit happens – or is off the table completely? – the debate about the EU’s future will remain low-key. But Europe will have to move on, with or without our British friends. This post was co-authored by Arjan Schakel (University of Bergen) and originally published by the FASoS Teaching & Learning Blog on 30 September 2019. The abolishment of minimum attendance requirements at FASoS just over two years ago has been a recurring topic of discussion. Literature on students’ persistence and results often highlights attendance as important, because absenteeism would increase the risk of dropout. Intuitively, one would expect attendance to be even more important in programmes with an active learning environment, such as PBL. Research finds that active learning environments have a positive effect on students’ study success, yet few studies have looked at the importance of (non-)attendance in such learning environments. In 2018, we published an article in Higher Education that addresses this gap. In this blog, we provide new data to contextualise the discussions on attendance, and present options for further research and refinement of the faculty’s attendance policy. Compulsory attendance and study success In our 2018 article, we investigated the effect of course (non-)attendance on study success of three BA ES cohorts (2012/2013, 2013/2014, 2014/2015). We looked at two forms of study success: retention, namely differences in attendance between students who passed the threshold of 42 ECTS of the binding study advice (BSA) and those who did not; and grades, namely the effect of attendance on students’ grade point average (GPA). We divided the 1059 students enrolled at the start of the three years in three sub-groups: (1) 650 students who attended all courses; (2) 548 students who also passed the BSA threshold; (3) 326 students who also attended the minimum number of required meetings at the end of the year. Controlling for a range of factors, including gender, age, nationality, pre-education and GPA of the previous period, we found that attendance has a clear additive impact beyond “active engagement” or “commitment to PBL”. Doesn’t this depend on the nature of PBL or on students’ overall commitment? Could certain rules, like minimum attendance requirements, stimulate desired behaviour? Or could the results be due to some level of endogeneity, given that the best-performing students tend to attend more meetings? Our data enabled us to differentiate within the group of students. Even among the committed students – those who met the minimum attendance requirements in all courses – we found that higher attendance has a substantial impact on the amount of ECTS obtained and the end-of-year GPA. Non-compulsory attendance and study success We have continued to collect data on attendance and study success since the abolishment of minimum attendance requirements, superbly supported by the exam office. Below we present data for all first-year BA ES and BA AC students in the academic year 2018/2019. Figure 1 shows cumulative attendance of students for period 1 until period 5. BA ES students attend more than 80% of tutorials, while BA AC students attend just below 80% after period 2, 79% in period 3, and 78% in periods 4 and 5. But overall, attendance among FASoS students is quite good. However, the number of students who miss one or more courses increases dramatically for BA AC students. Figure 1 displays cumulative attendance for those students who attended allcourses. Yet, whereas of the 276 BA ES who started in period one, 227 students (82%) had attended all courses by the end of period 5, of the 103 BA AC only 42 students (41%!) had done so. We believe that the low cumulative attendance of BA AC students is worrisome, because our research clearly reveals that attendance is strongly associated with GPA. Figure 2 displays the impact of cumulative attendance at the end of period 5 on the GPA at the end of the year. Figure 2 shows that students who attend 80% or more of the total meetings receive a cumulative GPA above the passing grade of 6.0. The whiskers indicate the 95 confidence intervals around the average, meaning that we are pretty sure (95% confident) that the estimate lies within the boundaries of the whiskers. The lower bounds of the whiskers do not cross the 6.0 line when cumulative attendance surpasses 80%, except for BA AC students, as the number of students on which the estimates are based is quite low: 25 instead of 143 for the BA ES.
Final thoughts Our new results strongly indicate that FASoS should strive for at least 80% attendance among students. As Gump writes “[s]tudents who wish to succeed academically should attend class, and instructors should likewise encourage class attendance”. We do not claim that attendance per se has an impact on study success, because our findings may very well be driven by intrinsically motivated, well-prepared, and therefore well-performing students who also attend more tutorials. Can we stimulate students to attend without resorting to external incentives such as obligatory attendance? Other policies are possible, including incentive schemes and showing students how (non-)attendance affects their results. During the past two years we used the latter in the BA ES, presenting attendance data during meetings of the mentor programme. However, this data was not always available. Pursuing this policy would require faculty commitment to rigorous data collection and analysis. In addition, it is not just attendance that matters in PBL, but also preparation and participation. Since FASoS data is administrative in nature, we cannot reflect on these and other factors, including motivation, self-efficacy and whether or not we sufficiently tap into students’ intrinsic motivation to attend tutorials. The faculty should therefore also commit to a thorough qualitative study regarding students’ perspectives on the importance of attendance. This post was originally published by Active Learning in Political Science on 11 July 2019. Last week Simon discussed the need to reflect on our teaching and learning, in particular also on what’s notworking. This made me wonder, are we actually able to reflect on our strengths and weaknesses? We all know how difficult self-reflection can be. I personally remember a management training during which I was asked to evaluate my own actions in a difficult situation of my own choice – and struggling to openly critique myself and reflect upon my behaviour. I recently witnessed how some of my colleagues find it easy to talk about teaching and learning, whereas others seemed to be struggling. Active learning is in Maastricht University’s DNA, with problem-based learning (PBL) being used across its programmes. But often PBL does not come natural to teaching staff; we are expected to take a backseat role and focus on process rather than on content. Hence, good teaching staff training is essential. New staff are introduced to PBL and need to follow a more detailed teaching training trajectory after a year of teaching. Events such as my faculty’s annual Education Day also play a role in this, through the exchange of experience and best practices. In the run up to this year’s Education Day I was asked to talk about a new teacher staff development programme, called Continuing Professional Development. This programme is aimed at stimulating further development of teaching staff and at further enhancing the university teaching community. Since it is not yet fully clear what kind of activities staff can do in this context, I planned two exercises that should give me an insight into colleagues’ needs: a bingo and a generative interview. The first exercise I have already discussed in more detail in a post published in November: a bingo. The bingo I used this time is pictured here: I explained to my colleagues that the aim of this exercise was a) to experience how easy it is to discuss and share teaching and learning ideas and best practices and b) to come up with some first ideas concerning their own training needs. This is also why I asked everyone to make sure to at least complete the box on the bottom left. The exercise worked well – and this time I timed it well too. People found it easy to talk, also because of the variety of topics to be discussed. The second exercise was one that I picked up during the recent Joint International Teaching and Learning Conference in Brighton. During the conference, Colin Brown (Northeastern University) hosted a workshop on teaching peer review in which he made use of generative interviews. We worked together in groups of three: one interviewee, one interviewer and one observer. Interviewer and observer together try to find out the interviewee’s views on a certain topic and formulate these views for them, which helps to actually more clearly formulate those views. Roles rotated. This was an interesting exercise and I decided to try it during the Education Day. I explained to my colleagues that this exercise was meant to get a more detailed understanding of their teacher training needs. While I participated in the Bingo, I decided to only observe my colleagues during this second exercise. Interestingly, where some immediately started talking (as I experienced myself during the conference workshop), others started to focus on details of procedure. I noticed that those colleagues who I know to be very involved in teaching and learning, seemed to find it much easier to do this exercise. They sometimes ignored the procedure, but they did eventually end up filling in the main part of the form pictured here: Colleagues less eagerly involved in teaching and learning were the ones who seemingly found it difficult to talk about themselves, their strengths and their weaknesses. Instead, they spend lots of time talking about the form and the procedures.
This shows that Simon’s call to speak out about our mistakes and our weaknesses may come quite natural to those of us who think about these issues on a daily basis (the readers of the ALPS blog or my faculty’s own teaching and learning blog). But this seems quite different for those colleagues for whom teaching does not come naturally or is rather viewed as a thing they have to do (instead of something they like to do). Staff training will hopefully get more teaching staff to reflect on what works and what doesn’t, but, as Simon writes, academia unfortunately encourage us instead “to big ourselves up, to represent a bold vision of progressive and successful practice.” PS During both exercises I played music to create a good atmosphere on a day that temperature went well above 35 degrees. You can find the playlist here. This post was originally published by the DCU Brexit Institute Blog on 21 May 2019. At the time of writing, we are nearing the third anniversary of the Brexit referendum of 23 June 2016. While a cause for celebration or a grave feeling of loss, depending on where you stand on the issue, it almost feels like nothing much has happened since. In fact, while Brexit originally was to happen on 29 March of this year, British politicians have been unable to reach agreement on what that Brexit should look like. As a result, Brexit has been postponed, most recently until the end of October 2019.
After many ‘meaningful’ votes (oh, the irony…) we are now in a situation in which British citizens are asked to vote during the upcoming European Parliament (EP) elections of 23-26 May 2019, something that both the British government and the European Union (EU) wanted to avoid. What might this development hold for the EP elections? The composition of the EP The most visible and at the same time most confusing result of the EP elections taking place pre-Brexit concerns the future composition of the parliament. The inaugural plenary session of the newly elected parliament is scheduled for 2 July 2019, nearly four months before the new Brexit date. But already in June group composition will be discussed. Parliament’s main business will first concern the composition of the new European Commission. As Simon Usherwood explained elsewhere on the DCU Brexit Blog, 73 of the newly elected 751 Members of European Parliament (MEPs) will be representing the British people. This has a direct effect on the composition of some groups. The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group was about to lose a large share of its membership – the MEPs from the Conservative Party – but will certainly have newly elected MEPs in their midst that will leave again when Brexit becomes reality. The same applies to the Party of European Socialists, of which Labour is currently a member of. The PES might benefit from this vis-à-vis the European People’s Party in the context of the Spitzenkandidaten contest, even though polls suggest that the EPP will remain the biggest party. When (if?) Brexit becomes reality, the newly elected British MEPs will leave again. The number of MEPs will then decrease to 705. Of the 73 British seats, 46 will be reserved for future enlargements and 27 will be redistributed to other countries. Does this mean that MEPs for these seats will already be elected, but can only take up their seat after Brexit? This is an issue that may be more complicated than anticipated. Euroscepticism and parliamentary politics post-Brexit Whether Eurosceptic parties in other countries are to benefit from this situation is difficult to predict. On the one hand, they could use the current situation as an example of how the EU prohibits nation-states from going their own way – against the outcome of a popular vote. Yet, on the other hand, we have seen that support for EU membership has gone up since Brexit and the current situation may simply highlight the chaos that awaits one when wanting to leave the EU. In any case, these are going to be interesting elections. As I already wrote elsewhere, we are seeing a political landscape evolve that better represents the topic that many citizens associate European elections with: are you for or against the EU? Whether we like it or not, with Macron pushing for a pro-European alliance and Salvini (soon to be joined by Orbán?) representing the Eurosceptic vote, we might see a campaign that also highlights this issue instead of the different policy choices to be made. And while the pro-European parties will remain the dominant force, Eurosceptic parties are projected to win more seats than ever before. While their representation in the EP may be a good thing for EU democracy, whether or not an increased number of Eurosceptic MEPs will change EU politics and the functioning of EP is another story. As Nathalie Brack shows in her recent book, informal and formal rules limit the political opportunities for Eurosceptic MEPs. In addition, the way in which these MEPs engage with EP business ranges from near-complete absence to full engagement. This is partly to be explained by the diversity between Eurosceptic parties, with some being against any form of European integration, whereas other rather campaign for a different Europe. What’s next? If only we knew. The Brexit saga has been one of many expected and unexpected plot twists. During the campaign for the 2024 European elections, we may look back at this whole affair as an interesting experiment, after Brexit was rejected in another referendum in 2020. Or we may see an election campaign that is concerned with the politics of an EU that has moved on after Britain finally left on 31 October 2019. Or perhaps just a few months later. |
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