Workshop (Senaatszaal 1)

Placemaking related to interdisciplinary education

Katusha Sol, Joris Buis, Elias den Otter, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Instituut voor Interdisciplinaire Studies (IIS) & Algemene Sociale Wetenschappen (ASW)

Introduction

Our workshop is about exposing an innovative, interdisciplinary form of education. The newly developed course ‘Placemaking: Estafette for Citymakers’ can be seen as an ongoing project regarding urban development in Amsterdam. Interdisciplinary bachelor students work for external partners (local foundations and initiatives, municipality, etc.), in order to improve Science Park area in Amsterdam on a local scale. During the course, students learn to apply their knowledge, work interdisciplinary and improve their personal and professional skills.

Outline of the project

Both science and high-level policy sometimes are far removed from what happens in practice. As local urban development is tangible and contains different stakeholders and interests, it is very useful create awareness about potential tensions between theory and practice. In urban areas there’s a strong interplay between local use and a more top-down vision. How ‘engineerable’ is the city? How are ideas of policymakers translated into  local planning? During the Placemaking course we use urban areas and neighborhoods as a laboratory where students experience and analyze the interplay between theory and practice, between bottom-up and top-down. In order to do this, we use the Placemaking method; a form of action-research whereby we take local qualities and local knowledge as a starting point for sustainable urban development.

During the Placemaking course we focus on theory, policy and implementation of Placemaking by first exploring the area in person: students research local social, economic and ecologic development by working on location. They gather local needs, wishes and qualities forming starting points for analysis and action. Students generate those kinds of insights by ‘mapping’ various aspects of the area; they combine different data, fieldwork and statistics by using a digital mapping tool. Next to this, students participate in workshops, excursions and lectures of (guest) teachers in order to equip them with useful  knowledge and skills to identify a problem and to intervene on a practical level. Their ‘mapping’ analysis leads to organizing a physical intervention, a next step in obtaining valuable contributions and insights for their external partner. With both their disciplinary and newly gained knowledge the students are being prepared to work as ‘placemakers’.

As urban development happens on the long term, the course is designed over several years: each group of students transfers their analysis and advice both to the external client and to a new group for the next semester. The course is designed as a multi-year and multi-player collaboration between the UvA, municipality and companies. In this way several stakeholders play a role in setting up and designing the new trajectory of the project.

We would like to share our experiences of the pilot-course in Placemaking and discuss how placemaking relates to interdisciplinary education.

Workshop (Senaatszaal 2)

A masterclass for lecturers working in INTER professional education: Sharing our approach and lessons learned

Jerôme van Dongen, Marije Duijsens, Albine Moser and Sandra Beurskens, Zuyd University

Background

Many innovations occur at the boundaries of disciplines, making cross-overs between health and technology, ict, arts, business etc. To be able to work on such problems in an INTER professional team, students need to develop their competences in INTER professional collaboration.

INTER professional learning appears to work best in small groups, using real-life problems to stimulate learning through experience and reflection.  However, lecturers are barely trained in providing INTER professional education. In order to facilitate INTER professional education of students lecturers need support to develop their own competences in designing, facilitating and evaluating/assessing INTER professional education.

The EMR Interreg project Technology in Health and the Brightlands project Limburg Meet (LIME) acknowledge the importance of INTER professional education and the need of lecturers with different backgrounds for support and development in this field. These projects deal with complex societal problems such as sustainable living in the community or the use of technology to support independent functioning of impaired people, and require students from different educational programmes working together. However, INTER professional education is only successful when lecturers know how to facilitate it.  We have initiated a masterclass in INTER professional education for lecturers from all disciplines at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences.

Aim

The aim of this workshop is to offer participants insight into a possible approach for supporting lecturers to facilitate INTER professional education. During the workshop we will share the content of our approach and the experiences and lessons learned as derived from participants.

Content of method

At Zuyd University we want to stimulate INTER professional educational activities among faculties, develop the competences of lecturers and increase INTER professional collaboration between colleagues of different faculties to share experiences and learn with and from (and about) each other.

These are:

1. Lecturers are aware of and understand each other’s professional competencies.
2. Lecturers engage in INTER professional collaboration in the educational cycle in terms of designing, implementing, evaluating, and adjusting IP educational material.
3. Lecturers deal with problems as part of INTER professional teams of lecturers.
4. Lecturers facilitate INTER professional teams of students in dealing with problems.
5. Lecturers consult the appropriate fellow lecturers in various study programmes both within and outside their own school.
6. Lecturers evaluate INTER professional teamwork with students and other lecturers.

The competences are necessary to be able to design, develop, facilitate and evaluate INTER professional education. To enable lecturers to develop these competences a  professional development training consisting of two masterclasses and an INTER professional site visit was developed.

This workshop starts with a short (theoretical) introduction in which we will present our competence framework. Then the pressure cooker method will be used to walk through our professional development training. Subsequently participants will experiment with various tools and methods such as an appetizer for getting to know each other, to increase their own competences in INTER professional education enabling them to use these methods in teaching students to increase their INTER professional competences. The workshop will be wrapped up with a short reflection on the usability of this approach in your own setting.

Postersession (Voorhof)