UWC Maastricht students get a taste of education innovation at EDLAB

On 21 October, EDLAB hosted students from United World College Maastricht for the second year in a row, as part of their Youth Social Entrepreneurship programme. The visit centred on one key question: what are the biggest challenges in education and educational innovation today, and how is Maastricht University addressing them?

The students came to get an inside look at how EDLAB and Maastricht University tackle those challenges, from exploring new technologies to supporting teaching practice across faculties.

The group, representing countries including China, Nigeria, Japan, Ukraine, Canada, Bulgaria, Spain, Croatia, Afghanistan, Palestine, the USA, France, Norway and Brazil, showed particular interest in educational innovation, technology in learning, and the use of AI.

This year, EDLAB partnered with DEXLab to offer the students two perspectives on educational innovation. Walter Jansen opened with an overview of current developments in education and how EDLAB’s projects address them, focusing in particular on the opportunities and questions raised by generative AI.

Roberta Di Palma from SBE's DEXLab, a UWC Maastricht alumna herself, then presented a VR-based training tool used at Maastricht University to support presentation practice and teamwork reflection. The session’s highlight came when one of the students volunteered to try the headset and gave demonstrated immersive learning in action.

In her thank you note, the students’ facilitator Ruth Okapi said that the students were enthusiastic about their visit: “They felt as though they were in a real board room and were blown away by the presentation. They could not stop talking about what Maastricht University is doing.”

We also thoroughly enjoyed the thoughtful discussion with the students!