Eindhoven
University of
Technology

Teacher’s Competences for Innovative Science Subjects

This TU/e Eindhoven School of Education course explores didactic themes of high school courses O&O (research and development) and NLT (nature, living and technology). Active student participation is expected through discussions, article readings, and small open challenges. Attendance is mandatory with a minimum requirement of 80% participation.

SETUP

This course is a relatively small course (5 till 15 students) and it covers different didactic themes of the high school courses O&O (research and development) and NLT (nature, living and technology).

There are weekly meetings with the students. Every week, the focus is on a different didactic theme. The teacher prepares slides and learning activities related to this theme. But the main learning activity of these sessions are the discussion between teacher and students with respect to the didactic theme. Preparation of the meetings is necessary. Students are provided a selection of readings and knowledge clips in advance. During at least one of the meetings a guest speaker is invited to share their perspectives and ideas related to the didactic topic of that week. Some workshops (coaching and writing a challenge description) provided by stichting Technasium are also part of this course. Besides the meetings, students work on small assignments which differ from each other in the level of openness, authenticity and whether students must work together or individually. Next to the smaller assignments students work together in a group on a larger real challenge.

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES (ILOS)

The main objectives of this course are: 

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

In particular, the course covers the following methods: 

ASSESSMENT

The assessment of the course consists out of multiple parts: the workshops are graded with a pass or no pass. The smaller assignments are graded with use of a rubric. All grades together are 30% of the final grade. The larger challenge is graded with a rubric which focusses both on the process and product of the challenge and counts for 70% of the final grade. The group discussions are compulsory. When an extra assignment is provided to a student who misses more then 20% of the meetings. This assignment should be graded sufficient to pass the course.  

EVALUATION

There is a group discussion about the quality of the course in the final meeting and students are asked to fill in the written survey at the end of the course.