Ines Lopez Arteaga, dean of the Bachelor College, opens the exhibition with a word of thanks to the lecturers who have brought their educational dreams to life. “It shows other lecturers what is already possible and may inspire ideas. Proposals can be submitted to the DRIVE program.”

Students

What was BOOST! again? The letters stand for “Be the Owner of your Own Study”. The name reflects that students have an important voice in the program, which is funded by advanced study funds, i.e., the money not spent on grants between 2015 and 2023. The student sounding board got to give its approval to the proposals submitted by lecturers. Their main question was always: ‘Will it help us learn?’.

The follow-up to this successful program is called DRIVE, another five-year plan. Program leader Ludo van Meeuwen came up with the name. “I like the sense of movement it expresses, with the screwdriver setting something in motion; and the letters stand for Digital, Resilience, Innovation, Visionary and Empower.” Van Meeuwen explains that the intention is for digital solutions for education to be embraced, for the new projects to be of long-term use, and that Empower refers to the students. “We empower them to be the leaders of their own learning process.”

Vision-driven

There are two major differences from BOOST. There is less funding and the program is more vision-driven. “We’re going to assess the lecturers’ proposals against TU/e’s educational vision. In previous years, we’ve learned the main topics to focus on.”

Those five main themes are AI, learning analytics, digital assessment, flexibilization and virtualization. Flexibilization means that students experience strong support in their own learning pathway, and virtualization refers to things like gamification and the use of virtual labs and VR and AR headsets. The foundation for learning analytics was also laid in BOOST. “This involves using students’ data traces to optimize their own learning behavior. A code of conduct was drawn up for this in collaboration with the students,” says the program leader.

Scaling up

But more is needed to maintain control over successful innovations. “Suppose a lecturer has had a great idea, worked it out for their own students, and now wonders: what’s the next step? If we want to scale up the most successful projects, support is needed.” Lopez Arteaga is pleased that a staff member has been appointed to manage the need for additional support for the next two years. “It would be a shame not to use good ideas more broadly, Van Meeuwen adds. Think of applying ideas across multiple TU/e departments or at other universities and even abroad.”

TU/e is an organization that is still learning, emphasizes the dean of Bachelor College. “We’re used to purchasing tools and running pilots, but now, using what we learned in the BOOST years, we’re going to see if that’s enough to achieve our educational vision.”