Title
Benchmark of assessment

Project team 
AW Heringa (projectleader), Rina Vaatstra, Ria Wolleswinkel

Finance
UM Leading in Learning, pillar Assessment and Evaluation

Goal of the project
Between the law faculties in the Netherlands, large similarities exist in the manuals that are used, the exchange of teachers and the contacts with professionals in the programmes of Dutch law. However, with regard to the studyload (the number of ECTS) and the level, form and quality of the assessments, we believe that there could be more coordination at a National level. Therefore the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University invited colleagues from other faculties in judging the quality and depth of our assessments within the context of our educational material.

Description of the project
The Faculty of Law of Maastricht University invited four experts from other national faculties of Law in order to review assessments and course material of the first academic bachelor year of Dutch Law. The aim was to examine the quality, level and form of assessments in the first year. One of the remarks of the reviewers was that the course objectives were not always described clearly enough. Another issue that was mentioned was the relationship between form of assessment (for example, multiple choice questions or essay questions) and level of knowledge that was assessed. Reviewers reached agreement upon the opinion that multiple choice could definitely be used to assess applied and insight knowledge, although it will take a lot of time to construct such questions. On the other hand, assuming that using an assessment with essay questions, applied and insight knowledge is always assessed was found to be incorrect. To get an overview of the subjects and level of assessment, the advice was to make a test content specification table for every assessment. In general, all attendees agreed afterwards that it would be inspiring to look at the series of courses and assessments within a legal subject area (for example Private Law) of an entire bachelor programme. Reviewers mentioned that they would like to have such sessions regularly, also for their own assessments.

Title
Matching & Binding

Project team
Rina Vaatstra (projectleader), Paul Adriaans, Annette Schade, Marc Weerts

Finance
UM Leading in Learning, pillar Study success

Projectgoal
How to select the students that match with your program? Although our faculty does the very best to inform our prospective students through brochures, open days and website, we are unable to prevent all students starting our programmes with the wrong expectations. During the first year some students find that their expectations do not match with the real program and will drop-out. From the students’ perspective this is a waste of study time and money. From the perspective of the faculty, reducing the drop-out rate is a key objective. 

Project description
By means of an online questionnaire students are encouraged to think about their motivation, study attitude, study skills and study expectations. We ask them about their expectations of the PBL-system, expected self-study hours, hours of planned activities next to their study. Based on their answers, prospective students received the codes green, orange or red. There were two possibilities: orange and red students were invited for an interview with the director of studies or they received a mail with the message to think deeply about their choice.

Results indicated that several characteristics predicted students’ average grades and obtained credits in their first year of study. These characteristics were: study skills, hours of self-study and the average examination grades from secondary school. For the current batch we concentrated also on qualitative questions about students’ motivation for chosen bachelor. From 2013-2014 onwards, this matching questionnaire was used as a selection instrument for the decentralized selection.

Title
Mentoring and Study success

Project leader
Rina Vaatstra

Finances
UM Leading in Learning, pillar Study success

Project goal
Major objectives of the mentoring system of the Faculty of Law were early detection of students who have difficulty in learning, habituation to the faculty and study choice. We wanted, if there were structural problems, to refer students to appropriate staff and solve potential problems at an early stage.

Project description
Students who were at risk of study delay, according to results from the matching questionnaire and the preliminary grade of the first course, were supposed to talk to a mentor. We wanted these students to get a good understanding of their study situation and guide them in the new academic environment. Mentors received the information of the matching questionnaire and the grades of the exams of the students concerned. They invited students for an interview twice, the first one immediately after the first course period and the second interview after the second period. If the mentor observes that the problems are more structural or not adequately handled by the student, he/she may refer the student to study advisors, training in study and assessment skills or to a student psychologist. It is not intended the mentor solves the student’s problem. The mentor encourages the student to self-examination and self-management and stimulates him or her to do so by asking questions and giving feedback.

Title of the project
Enhance learning with short video fragments of lectures

Project leader and team
A.W. Heringa (project leader), R. Vaatstra en P. Adriaans, Faculty of Law.

Financed by
UM Leading in Learning, Pillar E-factor in PBL

Project goals
In this project, we set up an item bank of short video fragments of approximately 15 minutes each. These video fragments were arranged around specific lectures, relevant themes, concepts and subjects in a course. Additionally, questions related to the relevant fragments of lecture(s) were also electronically presented to the students. Our assumption was that by watching the video fragments, students will understand concepts, themes and subjects better. As a consequence, we expected a positive effect of the number of fragments watched and questions made on the learning outcome. We also supposed that students were positive in evaluating improvement of their learning and insight by watching video fragments and related self tests. The idea further was that basic concepts and themes being conveyed in video lectures, which students can re-watch multiple times is needed for allowing the lecturer to engage in discussions, academic and theoretical exercises, and in depth treatises. If students have misconceptions the lecturer might refer the students to the video’s when they need further explanations about basic concepts.
In order to examine if there was an effect of using video fragments on learning, we examined the number of video fragments watched and questions of the self-test made during the courses. Furthermore, we specifically asked students in the evaluation questionnaire about the benefit of video fragments and the self test students were supposed to do. 
We analysed if a positive relation between students’ grades and the following variables existed:
1. number of video fragments watched
2. evaluation of the benefit of the video fragments to insight into the subjects
3. number of questions of the self-assessment made (if questions were available)
4. evaluation of the benefit of the questions to insight into the subjects

In conclusion we can say that watching video fragments and making self tests improve the insight and understanding of the subject matter of both first and second year courses. Since the effect of using these additional instructional materials is larger in the first year than in the second year, our expectation is that introducing these additional instructional resources more often in first year courses, students will learn and understand more, obtain more credits (ECTS) and drop-out will decrease. Supplementary to this, we would suggest to make video fragments and self test available for highly motivated exchange third year bachelor students who experienced considerable instructional aid of video fragments and self tests.
Making video’s is indeed an investment of time, but since the concepts discussed in first year video’s are not likely to frequently change, video’s may be used for several years. The availability of video’s also seems to appeal to diligent students, enabling them to study at their pace and time and to make sure that they do understand the basics. It is as much a tool for studying as it is for self-confidence and confirmation to indeed having grasped the essence.
The system has an important implication, that is that the basics covered in the video’s are not to be dealt with as such and again in lectures or tutorial groups but are to be taken for granted, so that lectures and tutorial groups can go into depth and facilitate discussion. We have not researched yet to what extent this effect is present and to what extent students do appreciate the lectures to have a different function and therefore refrain from attending them as being superfluous in their perspective for passing the exam.

Title of the project
Economy of scale for small-scale education
Subtitle: Integrating multimedia in blended learning scenario's to enable small group learning at a large scale

Project team
Subgroup FHML: Bas de Leng, O&O FHML, Lead overall project and subgroup FHML
Subgroup FL: Paul Adriaans, Lead subgroup FL
Subgroup SBE: Gwen Noteborn, Lead subgroup SBE / Katerina Bohle-Carbonell, O&O
External partners: Martin Haag, University Heidelberg/Heilbronn, Chair informatics department

Financed by
UM Leading in Learning, Pillar E-factor in PBL

Project goals
Develop and implement interactive multimedia cases for different content domains (law, economics and medicine) and settings (preparatory self-study, skills training and lectures).

Project scope
At all faculties of Maastricht University we see problems undermining an active stance of students towards PBL activities in the current curricula, resulting in suboptimal achievement of student potential and suboptimal utilization of the available learning resources. These problems are:
* Scarcity of appealing authentic case material from professional practice fields and insufficient opportunities for interacting with the material in a structured and reflective way
* Insufficient support for combining different work formats (individual, pairs, subgroups etc) within one educational session and for applying these formats in a flexible way in response to individual and group performances (depending on what is actually going on during an educational session).
* Insufficient support for linking different learning opportunities (self-study, tutorial groups, skills laboratories, and lectures) scheduled over time.

To solve these bottlenecks we will develop and implement interactive multimedia cases for different content domains (law, economics and medicine) and settings (preparatory self-study, skills training and lectures). Although group work remains a face-to-face event, the student responses are executed in a web based environment enabling logging of the student activities. By means of real-time processing of the responses, follow-up learning activities can be planned on the fly based on the performances of subgroups and individuals.

Title of the project
Leading in Learning project: “Influencing achievements of students (study success) by means of staff development for new tutors”.

Project leader
Cathérine De Rijdt

Project team
The team consists of 5 faculty-related staff development coordinators: Cathérine De Rijdt, Willem de Grave, Sylvia Haerkens, Jeannette Hommes and Wladimir van Mansum.

Project scope
In Problem Based Learning settings groups of students are guided by a tutor. A tutor facilitates, activates, and challenges. A tutor encourages critical reflection and helps the students to progress through the problem or task. In order to do that a tutor is asking questions, is probing or is suggesting in helpful ways. For many new tutors this is a challenging task.

Project deliverables
This project results in a DVD showing 16 situations which often occur during tutorials. For every situation several experienced tutors from various fields formulate a tip. In total 13 experienced tutors are sharing their knowledge and skills. Those tips show not only how and when these experienced tutors intervene, but also the beliefs of the experienced tutors. By giving information about the importance of the situation and by referring to conditions for intervening the experienced tutors create awareness. The variety in tips inspires new tutors and helps them to develop themselves.

Who should follow an Experience Day?

This day is intended for senior pre-university education pupils see diploma overview. You've already done some orientation, but still have some doubts about which programme suits you best. The bachelor Psychology or Brain Science caught your interest, but you'd like to know more before making your choice. Or perhaps you'd like to know more about Problem-Based Learning (PBL). Then the Experience Day is the perfect event for you.

Registering for individual courses

For non-FPN students, we encourage registration for minor tracks rather than individual courses.

In case you do want to register for an individual course, note that:

• UM student? Register via special course approval (in student portal)
• Non-UM student? Register via this form
• You can maximally register for 5 separate courses per year
• Premaster students cannot enroll in individual courses of the bachelor Psychology programme
• You cannot enroll in the following courses:  
• all master courses
• first and second year bachelor courses
• PSY3393  Clinical Psychology package
• PSY3379 The Professional in Psychology: An Internship
• PSY3378 A/B Intercultural Awareness 1/2
• PSY3393 Internship B

You cannot enrol in the following courses (unless it is part of your minor track or when you are an FPN exchange student):

• PSY3382 Psychedelic Medicine: The therapeutic Potential of mind-altering Substances
• PSY3392 Psychological prevention, intervention, and therapies
• PSY3359 Child Neuropsychology
• PSY3343 Forensic and Legal Psychology in a Nutshell
• PSY3375 Neuropsychology & Law
• PSY3341 Behavioural Problems in Childhood and Adolescence