Improving Student Outcomes & Need for High-Level Thinking Skills

Bert Verhoeven:

We have already noticed that in our classes, the student outcomes are better than last year.

So the results that students come up with, the level of the results, are they doing some research in design thinking and then they look into projects or sustainable development goals and they look for a problem and they find a solution and they present it. And that’s in a nutshell what they do. And the results of that are better, their research is better, there’s more depth in it. There’s a bit deeper thinking required nowadays than in the past because they can use AI as a learning tool and as a tool to help them. That also has the consequence that the level that we require to finish the course will also be at a high level from now onwards.

So there’s pros and cons. It’s also that everybody will have to study more and better and at a higher level. And that is sometimes very difficult. So we need to really rethink that as well and say, well what kind of roles are there that required this really high level thinking skills? And I think co-creating and editing definitely required that. Where the facilitating role may be done by people who may struggle a little bit with those higher thinking skills. And so again, it requires a whole rethink of what we do in our knowledge work. And most of us are knowledge workers nowadays. We’re all out there.