Previously granted Comenius projects

• 2025

  2025 - Senior Fellows

  Clinical Reasoning - from Basics to Bedside
  Paul Houben (dr., general practitioner, clinical reasoning coordinator - Faculty of Medicine)

  Clinical reasoning is a crucial skill for every doctor, but learning it is complex and takes a lot of practice. Houben is designing an integrated learning trajectory that guides students step by step, from the start to the end of the bachelor’s programme. Students are given more ownership of their learning process and practise in realistic educational settings.

  CoDent: a clinical case-multiplier created for and by dentistry students and lecturers
  Maxim Lagerweij (assistant professor - ACTA)

  Students turn their own clinical experiences into interactive digital learning materials for their peers. This helps them reinforce their knowledge while contributing to a growing database of relevant and up-to-date practice cases. The CoDent case-multiplier enriches both case-based and theoretical learning and supports the continued improvement of dental education as a whole.

  2025 - Teaching Fellows

  GLOW: Gaining Life skills for Optimal Wellbeing and Success: A transversal skills learning path in the Bachelor of Health Sciences
  Elke Vlemincx (assistant professor in Health Sciences - Faculty of Science)

  Within the Bachelor’s programme in Health Sciences, a new learning path on transversal skills is being implemented. Transversal skills are trainable skills that are not tied to a specific discipline. Examples include collaboration, decision-making, emotional regulation, presenting, and providing feedback. Through this learning path, students develop a personal and dynamic transversal skills profile. The path offers students the opportunity to actively work on both their professional and personal development throughout their studies.

  Portfolio Course Feedback
  Micha Wilhelmus (programme director and associate professor - Faculty of Science)

  A new approach to course evaluations with the project Portfolio Course Feedback (PCF). Traditional evaluations often offer only a limited view of students’ experiences. Within PCF, students learn how courses are designed and how to provide meaningful, constructive feedback. A selected group of students collects feedback during each course, discusses it together, and then shares their insights with the teaching teams.

• 2024

  2024 - Leadership Fellow

  Global English and International Dutch on the VU Campus (GEIN@VU)
  dr. Laura Rupp (Faculteit of Humanities)

  This project implements inclusive education at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam by means of a language diversity programme for Dutch and English. VU-students and staff become more aware of the different varieties of Dutch and English spoken at VU, leading to a better understanding and appreciation of each other. The core of the programme is the VU sMOOC (Social Massive Open and Online Course) "English Pronunciation in a Global World", which we will deploy in curricular and extracurricular on-campus education and other activities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Additionally, we will also develop a Dutch equivalent sMOOC called "International Dutch."

  2024 - Senior Fellows

  For the culturally diverse student, a Professional Companion form the future work field
  dr. Y.T.A. Taminiau (Faculty of Social Sciences)

  The guidance programme called Professional Companion aims at a better connection between culturally diverse students at VU and their future work field. Through the programme, students are guided by working alumni on study-related issues and advice social and soft skills. The programme not only ensures a better connection between the students and the professional field, but also provides an opportunity for the organizations around  VU to get in touch with the talented diverse students before they graduate. This programme will ensure a win-win situation for both students and organizations in the work field.

  RECEPT. Rebuilding Education: Co-creation and Empowerment for Planetary Transformation
  dr. J.J. Tielbeek (Faculty of Medicine)

  The RECEPT project redesigns existing education by co-creating new, future-proof curricula with students. We address a dual challenge: 1) Limited student engagement in shaping education; 2) Students' need for meaningful learning experiences, including perspectives for addressing the planetary crisis. Through bottom-up co-creation and co-teaching, we innovate 10 VU Bachelor courses, evolving the curriculum with each new student cohort. The outcome is relevant, engaging education and a practical cookbook for curriculum co-creation, serving as a model for higher education institutions.

  2024 - Teaching Fellows

  Street Psychology: experiential education for Psychology students
  dr. M.B.J. Toffolo (Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences)

  ​​The mental well-being of young people in the Netherlands is deteriorating. Our new course, Street Psychology (based on the successful course "Street Law"), could help with this. In this course for the Bachelor of Psychology, students will give workshops about psychology to high school pupils. They will use interactive teaching methods to tackle psychological issues that high schoolers are struggling with. The focus of this experiential education will be on students' learning and they will develop broad skills such as collaboration, creative and solution-oriented thinking, and presenting. The Comenius grant will be used to design, test and evaluate Street Psychology.​ 

  The teacher-patient, role model for the bèta student
  dr. E. van Deel  (AmsterdamUMC)

  Our education project features biomedical professionals who have personal experience with medical conditions, serving as role models. By sharing their career journeys and explaining their own pathophysiology, they will break through prejudices and inspire all our students, with and without a medical condition.

  ‘Building a Professional Identity’: Shaping Tomorrow's Communication Professionals through a Professional Learning Path
  dr. M.G.M. Jansen and drs. E. Schagen (Faculty of Social Sciences)

  Students desire a clearer connection between their education and future careers. To prepare students for the evolving field of communication, the programme plans to develop a professional skills learning path focusing on four key roles: the information specialist, the linking pin in organizations, the campaigner, and the communication scientist in a multidisciplinary team. This initiative integrates competencies from the "SEEDS" profile for communication professionals and uses Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs) for assessment. The approach combines academic theory with practical skills, aiming to empower students to enter the workforce confidently. This project will not only benefit Communication Science students but also serve as a pilot for other non-applied behavioural science programmes.

• 2023

  2023 - Senior Fellow

  Interactive vlogs for clinical education: the entire patient journey in view of a wide range of diseases
  dr. S. Van der Velde (Amsterdam UMC – location VUmc)

  Interactive vlogs are short educational videos in which you follow the doctor in his daily activities, just like interns do during their internships. Because hospitals are becoming more and more specialized and not all care is offered in every location, doctors in training increasingly lack experience with certain diseases and processes. By offering them a wide range of interactive vlogs, they can study diseases or processes themselves in a way that comes closest to practice, namely with lifelike films of real doctors at work with their patients.

  2023 - Teaching Fellows

  E-learning program for toothcariesdiagnostics and cariesmanagementtraining for dental students: ELISA 
  dr. M.D. Lagerweij (Academic Center for Dentistry Amsterdam)

  It is a challenge for dental students to diagnose early caries lesions and to estimate the individual effects of preventive interventions such as toothbrushing instructions. The aim of this project is to help students to accelerate this learning process by offering virtual patients via e-learning. In this e-learning they can see patients on a weekly basis, simulating that the patient has lived for months (instead of a week) and treat caries with preventive measures instead of immediate drilling and filling. The teachers will give feedback/forward to the progress of the students until they have reached a sufficient proficiency level.

  Emotions in and around the classroom
  dr. M. Weerdesteijn (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  When students study international crimes, such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, they may experience negative emotions. Sometimes this adversely impacts their well-being and learning process. In order to provide more guidance on how to cope with these emotions, an extra-curricular course for the International Crimes, Conflict and Criminology Master’s at VU Amsterdam will be created in which alumni who work in the field, talk about their job, how it impacts them and how they cope. In preparation for these meetings, students train their meta-cognitive skills which allows them to have more control over their emotions.

• 2022

  2022 - Senior Fellows

  Caring together, learning together: parents of care-intensive children in healthcare education
  Dr. A. de la Croix (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  Medical students and other future healthcare professionals miss the perspective of the patient in their education, while students need to learn more about the patient journey, complex care networks, and fields of work outside the hospital. In this project, parents of care-intensive children are introduced as educational partners. They are a rich source of learning through their knowledge and experience. Parents receive educational training and are collected in a so-called 'parent database. In this way, parents can be used in multiple subjects and courses. This innovation is characterized by cooperation and interdisciplinarity and increases the understanding of the patient journey, the knowledge of care networks, the interest in disability care, and the empathy of future care professionals.

  The Impact Lab: Co-creating the Design and Implementation of Active Blended Learning
  Dr. A.J. Porter (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  It is an enormous challenge to come up with active blended learning solutions on a large scale within higher education without losing sight of the needs of various stakeholders (teachers, students and support staff). Impact Lab offers structural support for the design and implementation of active blended learning solutions together with various stakeholders. A unique 'challenge-driven co-creation' process and combination of an online collaborative platform with face-to-face workshops will provide knowledge integration within a blended learning co-creation community and offer insights into the requirements to achieve pedagogical and institutional benefits of active blended learning.

  2022 - Teaching Fellow

  Lost in the middle of formal and on-job training: How do young professionals proactively develop the skills of working with artificial intelligent applications
  Dr. M.H. Rezazade Mehrizi (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  Lost in the middle of formal and on-job training: How do young professionals proactively develop the skills of working with artificial intelligent applications? Millions of doctors still make daily decisions, such as recognizing lung nodules or breast cancer, based on their expertise and practices of decades ago. Despite the fact that recent technological advances are enabling the transformation of medical services, the way medical professionals are trained in the effective and critical use of these new technologies is lagging behind. This project creates a learning environment in which medical professionals can develop their skills with these technologies, so that they can apply them safely and effectively to patients.

• 2021

  2021 - Teaching Fellows

  Building a Learning Path using Minecraft
  Dora Achourioti, RMA, MSc (Amsterdam University College (UvA & VU))

  In most bachelor’s programs, mandatory skills courses are an important part of first-year curricula, this is also true at Amsterdam University College with the course ‘Logic, Information, Argumentation’ (LIA); an introduction to logic, argumentation and critical thinking from an interdisciplinary approach. LIA is one of the pillars of the AUC Liberal Arts and Science program. As has become clear from student evaluations over the years, the simple fact that LIA is a required course causes our students to quickly lose interest and reduces their academic engagement and possibly their motivation for the program in general. In this project, we aim to address this problem by better connecting with the intrinsic motivation of our students. 

  An online student portfolio
  Sean Telg (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  This project proposal introduces a platform for an integrated, online student portfolio that is active both prior to and during the first year of study. The main goal is to facilitate the transition from secondary to academic education. Prior to study, the platform offers modules with targeted information and exercises to test and improve quantitative skills. During the study, this is continued through prior knowledge modules that make the connections between subjects and coherence in the program explicit for new students.

  Transdisciplinary Global Health Challenge
  Nadine Blignaut-van Westrhenen, PhD (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  More and more programmes within VU Amsterdam offer students the opportunity to work on social issues. However, this is still done on a relatively small scale and projects are often monodisciplinary. Working on complex social issues requires the integration of insights from different disciplines. This project proposal describes an innovative ‘Transdisciplinary Global Health Challenge’. To effectively tackle complex health challenges, students need to cross disciplinary boundaries and interact with health professionals, patients and others to gain a deep understanding of global health problems, and to take coherent and strategic action to address these problems at the local level.

  Team Future Science: Inspiring life sciences research master students to provoke bottom-up professional change
  Ms Madison R. Carr (MSc), doctoral candidate (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  We need a change in the professional culture of life sciences researchers. Improving the reproducibility of research will benefit from young scientists becoming skilled at managing and sharing their data and communicating about their research. It is still difficult for the majority of scientists to perform these important tasks well. The next generation of researchers are beginning their careers in a rapidly changing field, where public funding evaluates not only scientific publications, but also includes a broader set of contributions and societal impact.

  Dentists of the future learn to deal with medical emergencies through serious gaming
  Denise van Diermen, M.D., PhD. (UvA, VU)
  
  During their careers, our students, the dentists of the future, will increasingly have to deal with older and medically complex patients due to the aging of the population and longer retention of their own teeth. The dentist must be well equipped to recognize medical emergencies and provide professional first aid until medical assistance arrives. International research has shown that dentists often do not feel competent to do this. At ACTA, students are trained according to the ABCDE method, an internationally accepted method of first aid. This includes the use of simulation patients. Our students have indicated that they need to practice these cases regularly.

• 2020

  2020 - Leadership Fellow

  VU Plan for Success. A program for successful and realistic study planning of second-year bachelor students with study delay
  Klaveren, C.P.B.J. van (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  Student attrition and study delay are problems Dutch higher education has struggled with for years. First-year interventions, such as tutoring and BSA (Binding Study Advice; academic dismissal), have reduced dropouts and shortened time to degree. There is a growing concern however, about burnout among students in later years, but interventions and research on student’s course planning in the second bachelor year are limited. The aim of ‘VU Plan for Success’ is to counsel students who begin their second-year with a credit backlog (students-at-risk) on how to improve their ability to take autonomous responsibility for their learning and success.

  2020 - Teaching Fellows

  The Writing Machine. Controlling the writing process with tools for self-regulated academic writing
  Bouwer, R. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  To function fully in today’s knowledge society, students must be able to communicate their ideas clearly in writing. Yet writing scientific texts, such as a research proposal or thesis, is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for students. This project responds to the need for tools that will turn students into better writers. Academic writing is a cognitively complex skill. Writers must think of many things at once, such as generating and selecting relevant content and a logical structure, formulating scientifically, and referencing correctly.

  A new canon for the history of philosophy
  Ierna, C. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  History of philosophy is taught almost exclusively chronologically with a standard canon of authors and texts. This canon is increasingly under pressure: too sexist, too racist, too Eurocentric. The linear approach makes it seem as if everything is already irrefutably fixed. Students, teachers, and researchers argue for a radical change to this rigid “dead white males” canon, but there is no consensus on who the new indispensable texts and authors should be. In practice, the old canon is often still relied upon, haphazardly supplemented by alternative sources and figures. 

• 2019

  2019 - Senior Fellow

  Students who care. Low Intensity Treatment certificate for mental health problems
  De Wit, L.M. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  In the project “Students who care,” Master’s students in psychology, after preparation in the bachelor, will provide low-intensity online psychological treatments to fellow students across VU Amsterdam who are struggling with mental health issues. The project uses a digital platform within the Caring Universities project. This innovation prevents more serious complaints in students and promotes the connection with the professional practice for the aspiring psychologists. 

  2019 - Teaching Fellows

  VU-BugZoo. A persuasive digital platform for teaching software testing
  Silvis-Cividjian, N. (VU, Bèta) 

  Students consider software testing a boring, thankless, dogmatic activity. That changes when they can see the errors, whose presence they usually only suspect. To verify this hypothesis, VU Amsterdam is developing a lively, persuasive, and motivating learning platform consisting of software rich in bugs, both self-contained and hidden. Furthermore, advanced tools for code diagnostics and visualization are available, among others. 

  Opening a Dialogue about Mental Health through Comics and Creative Writing
  La Cour, E.L. (VU, FGW) 

  The number of students with mental health problems is increasing. Creative writing and drawing can have a positive impact on self-understanding and well-being. By having students create short stories and comics, students explore their personal experiences with mental health issues. These may be their own experiences, or those of a friend, family member, or literary character. This creates a safe learning environment where students can talk to each other about these topics. 

  Breaking the silence. Medicine students create connective theater about safety and wellness
  Leyerzapf, H. (VU, VUmc) 

  Many medical students face (sexual) harassment and exclusion. This is related to the norm image of the doctor: white, male, high socio-economic background and heterosexual. It is necessary that students learn to translate prejudice into open questions, to discuss insecurity and exclusion, and to name values, emotions and norms. Through interactive theater, students with faculty, physicians, and researchers develop ways to break silences and competencies to care for themselves and their colleagues. 

  Learning by teaching. Law students in the high school classroom
  Reneman, A.M. (VU, Law) 

  Law students learn to understand the law by teaching it. That’s the idea behind Street Law, a program in which undergraduate law students teach workshops on the law to high school students. Students offer interactive teaching methods, such as discussions, role plays and practice courts. The learning process of law students is central. They set their own learning goals, reflect, and create lesson plans on legal topics that students encounter in their daily lives. 

  Skills-based education. Statistics education for training critical academics
  Stunt, J.J. (VU, VUmc) 

  Society needs critical and reflective academics. This also applies to statisticians and data analysts. VU Amsterdam is therefore developing a didactic concept in which students discuss scientific research and the meaning of empirical results with each other and with scientists. In addition to lectures and workshops, students interview scientists and develop both an e-learning and a blog. 

  Buddies breaking barriers. A buddy system for diversity promotion in medical school
  Wouters, A. (VU) 

  A diverse student body and physician population are crucial to training and an inclusive health care system. However, non-Western immigrants, students without a medical network or from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are particularly underrepresented in medical school. In attracting precisely these students, role models are important. In this project, medical students go to high schools with relatively many students who can provide diversity. In a buddy system, students accompany students interested in studying medicine.

• 2018

  2018 - Leadership Fellow

  Community service interactive and interdisciplinary CS12
  Zweekhorst, M.B.M. (VU, Bèta)

  Vrije Universiteit initiates a course and a final project for master’s students to conduct interdisciplinary research in collaboration with society. Master’s students identify and analyze problems with various stakeholders in society. In interdisciplinary teams, students conduct research on the identified problems with social actors. The results are presented and discussed in a broader context. The intention is to make this project also available to other (international) universities.

  2018 - Senior Fellow

  A didactic approach to 3D reasoning with a virtual reality tool
  Muijlwijk-Koezen, van, J.E. (VU, Bèta)

  A prototype virtual reality tool has been developed within the Drug Discovery & Safety program at the Vrije Universiteit that allows students to explore and manipulate the 3D structure of molecules. Students can walk around structures, as it were, but also descend into a structure to examine details. This project for STEM education links the development of didactics for inquiry-based learning with the further development of this virtual reality tool.

  2018 - Teaching Fellow

  Give each student a voice!
  Veen van der, M. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  The student population of the Pedagogical Sciences program at VU Amsterdam is very diverse. The program has a lot of small-scale teaching with opportunities for group interaction. To increase the quality of interaction, instructors receive training that also helps them better utilize the diversity of the student population.

• 2017

  2017 - Teaching Fellows

  Diversity in Talents
  Van Luijn, A. (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

  In this project, students from the master’s program “Management, Policy Analysis and Entrepreneurship in the Health and Life Sciences” will create their own labour market orientation track on “Diversity in Talents”. They will organize a seminar with keynote speakers, their own presentations and info stands of possible employers. Talent development, professional skills and attention to cultural differences are combined with the formation of a professional network.

  Diversity in medical education
  Muntinga, M.E. (VU, VUmc)

  Medical students at VU Amsterdam are a very diverse group, but the standard image of ‘the doctor’ in the hospital is often still ‘white’ and ‘male’. ‘Professional behavior’ of a doctor is often still ‘neutral, contextless and depersonalized’. Can it be done differently? In this project, residents, doctors in training and specialists discuss cultural diversity, inclusion and intercultural communication. An artist makes a film based on the conversations. This film will be used to further disseminate the conversation within the hospitals. The project is part of the VUmc’s learning line “Interculturalization and Diversity.”