Education

The University of Bologna, founded in 1088, is the oldest operating university in the world. There is a telling picture of a lecture given by Henricus of Nijmegen, who lived from circa 1360 till 1390. It has all the features of a present-day lecture in university education: the lecturer towers above his students and orally transfers his knowledge to a select audience of men and women. Those in the front rows are all ears, but those in the back are chatting or have dozed off.

Laurentius de Voltolina. Liber ethicorum des Henricus de Noviomagum. Kupferstichkabinett SMPK, Berlin/Staatliche Museen, Preussiischer Kulturbesitz, Min. 1233

Little has changed, it seems, in the centuries gone by. The teacher is still responsible for all parts of the educational model, up to and including examination, which commonly involves an exam that expects students to reproduce knowledge transferred to them by their teacher. Classic though it may be, however, this type of education, as was established from the sixties onwards, causes delays in student progress and drops in student motivation: a mediocrity mindset. This was not what was required in a decade in which cutbacks and Selective-Shrinkage-and-Growth operations forced the then Catholic University of Brabant to start pursuing higher academic success rates.

Student Oriented Education

It was recognized without fail, of course, that higher academic success rates should not be affecting the quality of education. And so, from the 1992-1993 academic year onwards and led by Rector Magnificus De Klerk, a major revision of education got underway: Student-Oriented Education (SGO), which has been called the rather lackluster version of the more successful Maastricht Problem-Based Learning program. This proved to be the start of a long series of educational measures, some government-imposed and some self-initiated, causing student progress to be closely monitored and learning objectives and exam regulations to be precisely defined. Binding study advice thresholds and a series of performance indicators were introduced into students’ first year at uni. One of their effects was that success rates, which had been much lower in the early 21st century, had gone back up to 75 percent in 2016.

Weaving character

What strikes the eye is that these measures tended to be principally success-rate-oriented, whilst education itself commonly remained a teacher-dominated and orally transmitted activity, and the lecture facilities reflected this state of affairs. The student mindset barely changed, with students, their numbers on the up, apparently embracing the sentiment of “Just tell me what I should be doing.” Advancing digitization then proved to be the spark that kickstarted new ideas on education itself. The new Education and Self-Study Center (CUBE, picture), which opened its doors in 2018, is student-oriented and all set for the teaching and learning of the future, comprising not only the acquisition of knowledge but also the application, analysis, critical evaluation, reflection and generation of new knowledge. The academic mindset, then, of the new student will be stimulated by video lectures, modular education, interfaces with dynamic work fields, small-scale settings and talent management tools. These are the concepts that will be driving education in the years ahead. The latest educational vision statement succinctly puts it in three words: knowledge, skill and character.