The intertwining of research and education makes academic education unique and is the primary means of having societal impact: the thousands of students at the university are our future policymakers, doctors, entrepreneurs, and more, who will shape our future. UGent must therefore be the reference for high-quality academic education. This means that we focus on knowledge sharing through effective teaching methods and formats, where each programme stimulates the development of subject-specific competencies. Students are actively involved in education, acquire critical and reflective skills, and learn that complex problems require solutions from different perspectives.
Hundreds of colleagues dedicate themselves every day to their teaching tasks. However, current societal changes such as increasing student numbers, the impact of work and study pressure on wellbeing, and developments such as artificial intelligence make this a challenge. To address these challenges, we build on the work already done and focus on three concrete objectives:
- Strengthening the governance and sustainability of programmes
The responsibility for organising and operationalising education lies with the individual programmes. They are given the necessary freedom and autonomy, but they also bear responsibility for safeguarding quality. Programmes and their chairs must therefore be able to fully rely on support from the faculty education support services (FDO) and the university services. The support services relieve lecturers and programmes and offer them the opportunity to professionalise so that they can carry this responsibility with the best knowledge. Faculty education directors act as a bridge between UD1, FDO, and the programmes. The great diversity in our programmes (in terms of student numbers, teaching methods, size of teaching teams, etc.) makes a one-size-fits-all approach impossible and requires support that considers the uniqueness of programmes. New initiatives for education policy must therefore have broad support and be determined participatively.
To further strengthen the quality of programmes and support programme teams in their governance, we facilitate the meetings of the interfaculty learning networks for programme committee chairs both logistically and organisationally. We believe that sharing knowledge and experience can enhance programme quality. For this reason, we also provide training for faculty education directors so that they can better manage their FDO. The basic training for lecturers and assistants must take greater account of the uniqueness of the programmes. It goes without saying that a class of 20 students requires a different teaching approach than a group of 500 students or more. Comparable training must also be offered for the supervisors of practical exercises and tutorials.
The increasing student numbers have already prompted many faculties and programmes to think about sustainable policy choices and the efficient use of staff, given the workload. Without compromising on the quality of education and student guidance, we further encourage programmes to think about rationalising the programme offerings, such as offering elective courses only biennially, limiting the number of course units per lecturer, and fairly distributing course units among lecturers. We give more trust and ownership to the programmes, making the administrative process and controls of programme reforms leaner.
Making sustainable policy choices for efficiency should never lead to a reduction in the quality of education. Students have the right to quality education, should (as much as possible) have freedom of choice in their programme, and receive feedback on assignments. Artificial intelligence and digitalisation can help with this in the future. We proactively monitor this and ensure that the university services provide the necessary support to lecturers. At the same time, a sustainable education policy requires good coordination between the faculty board, departments, and programme committees so that faculty policy, personnel policy, and education policy complement each other. We trust faculties to monitor this but ensure that we can offer support when needed.
In terms of quality assurance, steps have been taken in recent years to give programmes more ownership of quality assurance and to reduce the administrative burden through Eigen Regie 3.0. To further support programme teams in this, we focus on further unlocking data – always with respect for the privacy of all involved. Much data is already available in UGI (programme evaluations, data on study progress, or the composition of the student population) that programmes can already use. We are looking into whether data on programme evaluations from UGI can be directly integrated into the programme monitor. We also focus on collecting more qualitative data. It is one thing to determine that study efficiency is declining or that workload is perceived as too heavy, but we do not yet know the causes. We address this through qualitative methods such as focus groups. The FDOs and UD1 work together to organise this and support the programmes.
- Promoting student enrolment and progression
In recent years, both UGent and the Flemish government have strongly focused on orienting new students: ‘Ask SIMON’, the positioning tests, the Columbus orientation test, and of course, information days, SID-ins, and other moments to inform students. However, we must acknowledge that the study choice process is not straightforward for many students. As a result, they do not always choose programmes that match their interests or competencies. For this reason, we want to evaluate whether the orientation tools sufficiently answer the information future students seek and adjust them where necessary.
Once enrolled, students must truly be able to be students. This means that, in addition to their studies, students should be able to enjoy student life. This is not the same as complete freedom. UGent must also teach students to handle the autonomy they receive in higher education. We know that self-regulatory skills are important for study success. Therefore, we believe that every programme should explicitly focus on self-regulation. This means that we invest in students’ ability to effectively plan, monitor, and adjust their own learning process so that they can study independently and purposefully. Every student will benefit from this, but especially students from disadvantaged groups for whom progressing in higher education can come with additional challenges. We do not impose a specific method on programmes to achieve this: lecturers can integrate it into a course, the mentoring service can provide lessons, it can be offered in an online learning trajectory, etc. We ensure that FDO staff and staff from the education functional domain can further delve into this to assist programmes in shaping it.
A good knowledge of Dutch (or English in the English programmes) is also an important factor for study success in higher education. Therefore, we ensure that language policy becomes a central theme again in the support that the education function domain offers to programmes. Language policy staff must be able to support language learning pathways in programmes, offer courses in academic writing or oral presentation techniques, and provide support for language assignments. We know that student numbers will continue to rise in the coming years and that student enrolment will further diversify. To maintain the quality of education and teach students the necessary academic language skills, the importance of language policy and language support is significant.
We realise that even with the previous measures, reorientation of students will remain important. The tightened study progress measures will ensure that attention to a good transition to another programme will be even more indispensable. To avoid students with the necessary competencies to obtain a higher education diploma from dropping out unqualified, we ensure institutional collaboration with the university colleges in our association. Both in orientation and reorientation, we help students find a programme that matches their interests and skills.
- Managing study and work pressure for students and colleagues
A stimulating study environment is essential for the motivation, study success, and wellbeing of students and colleagues. When students and staff feel better, they will also feel more involved in education. Therefore, it is important that UGent is a challenging, attractive, and healthy learning and working environment. Excessive study load and work pressure are contrary to this. It is the university’s responsibility to monitor this. We therefore expect programmes to avoid deadlines for assignments from different course units being too close together or students having to do too many group projects. For staff, this means that the scope of lecturers’ teaching assignments is limited, for example, in the number of courses (partly thanks to further rationalisation of the programme offerings), and that assistants must have sufficient time to conduct their doctoral research.
Everyone, both students and lecturers, must be able to take sufficient breaks throughout the academic year. These breaks are often missing when deadlines for assignments are scheduled during or after holiday periods. For the vast majority of students, the Christmas period is also not a holiday due to the exam preparation. Therefore, we evaluate whether targeted adjustments to the academic calendar are possible, without reducing the number of teaching weeks or increasing work and study pressure.
Finally, we must not lose sight of our international students. International students integrate too little into the broader UGent community. As a result, both they and our ‘regular’ students miss out on opportunities for a real exchange of international perspectives. Together with the Internationalisation function domain, we ensure better exchange of good practices and new initiatives to improve the experiences of Flemish and international students, in line with our internationalisation policy.