Comenius programme

€50.000, one-year project, small-scale innovation (e.g., course level). You are at the beginning of your career with at least two years of teaching experience in higher education.

€100.000, two-year project, innovation in a complete degree programme. You have at least five years of teaching experience in higher education. A maximum of one candidate per faculty can submit (see application procedure for more information).

€500.000, three-year project, innovation in one or more faculties or a complete institution. You have at least seven years of teaching experience, educational leadership skills and a track record of contributing to the educational climate of your higher education institution. A maximum of one candidate per institution can submit (see application procedure for more information).

More information regarding the grants can be found in the Comenius brochure and by consulting the FAQ on the NRO website.

NRO has created short videos with tips on how to write a Comenius proposal, which you can view on their FacultyFruit website.

For questions, please contact the TAG: tag rug.nl.

The COVID-19 crisis has led to a rapid shift to remote learning in higher education. The past period has ensured an acceleration of ideas and innovations that already stood on the back burner in many institutions, as a result of which opportunities arose for a more permanent shift to hybrid education. Although this shift opens new doors, it is also accompanied by challenges. How can you enable students on the campus and students online to collaborate well together and achieve equivalent learning objectives? How can you facilitate the personal development and well-being of students in a hybrid environment? Projects within this theme will contribute to an optimal balance between offline and online education to increase the quality of education provided.

Increasing diversity within higher education requires a more flexible connection with the characteristics and needs of students. This means that educational institutions must be able to differ in the approach to and design of courses, and in the extent to which students, from the outset, can gain control over their own learning path. Students’ control can be increased by more flexibility between and within degree programmes or in courses and forms of assessment. For this, a good support system needs to be in place. How can students’ autonomy be strengthened so that they can figure out for themselves what they need to learn? How can we ensure that all students can benefit from this? How can students be helped to (learn to) make these choices? Projects within this theme focus on the student’s control over and (joint) responsibility for designing his or her degree programme course in higher education.

Higher education institutions face a challenge in educating students for a changing society and employment market. Complex societal issues, in other words, wicked problems, require transdisciplinary or international collaboration with societal partners to realise innovative solutions. In this way, education can have added value for both society and the training of students. How can students taking part in a course work on questions and needs from society in collaboration with other education programmes, (education) institutions and civil society organisations? Projects in this theme contribute to the knowledge, skills, and insights needed to prepare students for society and the future employment market.

The free theme covers the entire breadth of the Strategic agenda for higher education and research “Fit for the future”. Projects within this theme tie in with the subjects and ambitions stated in the strategic agenda.

Precise guidelines for this application are published in the Calls for Proposals. If you are interested, please contact your faculty funding officer for internal deadlines and procedures.

• Information meeting by NRO | July 2022
• Letter of intent | Deadline: September 2022
• Preliminary application | Deadline: October 2022
• Full application | Deadline: January 2023
• Decision by the assessment committee | April 2023

Precise guidelines for this application are published in the Calls for Proposals.

For the Senior Fellow grant: Only one Senior Fellowship can be nominated per faculty. Most faculties therefore organize an internal selection procedure. If you are interested, please contact your dean and faculty funding officer for internal deadlines and procedures.

• Information meeting by NRO | July 2022
• Letter of intent | Deadline: September 2022
• Full application | October 2022
• Rebuttal based on preliminary advice | Mid-January 2023
• Decision by the assessment committee | April 2023

Precise guidelines for this application are published in the Calls for Proposals.

For the Leadership Fellows grant: Only one Leadership Fellowship can be nominated per institution. Therefore the UG organizes an internal selection procedure in which Deans are asked to submit names of possible candidates at the beginning of each calendar year. If you are interested, please contact your dean and faculty funding officer for internal deadlines.

• Information meeting by NRO | July 2022
• Letter of intent | Deadline: September 2022
• Full application | Deadline: October 2022
• Rebuttal based on preliminary advice | Early January 2023
• Interviews | Late March 2023
• Decision by the assessment committee | April 2023

2022 | Leadership Fellows

Student diversity is the norm rather than the exception in teaching nowadays. Diversity should bring value to the learning process of all students. However, research indicates that it requires careful planning of lecturers to develop diversity into a valuable asset in the learning process of students. If poorly managed, diversity may result in tensions and reinforcement of prejudices among students. To make value of diversity, lecturers need both technological and pedagogical training and support. This project offers technological support for, a.o., inclusive group work through educational logistics, while pedagogical support is offered through inclusiveness trainings.

2022 | Teaching Fellows

Developing a Framework to Optimize Existing Curricula for Hybrid Instruction
Many students attend university to study STEM fields, but may not be able to afford tuition and boarding without having a job at the same time. Given the recent increases in undergraduate students enrolling in those studies, which often have large introductory courses that lack the physical space to accommodate them during lectures and tutorials, universities need to reconsider how those courses are organized; one solution is hybrid education. Our project proposes the development of a framework, based on research of effective teaching practices, that instructors can use to adapt existing curricula for hybrid instruction.

2022 | Teaching Fellows

Measuring and Imagining Spatial Design: integrating geospatial measurements and virtual realities to support spatial skills of students in collaborative spatial planning and design.
Complex spatial problems in urban areas require the integration of knowledge from different perspectives to make informed urban design decisions. In this project we develop a teaching module including a Geospatialreality toolset, that enables the use of spatial data for designing an urban area informed by quantitative measurements of spatial features and subjective experiences in a Virtual Reality environment. The toolset will be interactive and dynamic: changes in the design will affect the quantitative measurements and the experience in VR. The module will learn how to create a design with iterative and collaborative methods, enabling a transdisciplinary approach.

2022 | Teaching Fellows

A multilingual approach for students from a broad language program
As a language student, you probably recognize this problem: you want to major in French but most of the courses in your language program are offered in English. Yet, you are supposed to reach a high level in French during your bachelor's degree. This project aims to help you by offering a multilingual course in which you learn to understand each other's languages and cultural points of view, while you continue to develop the French language through strategies such as language comparison, interpretation and mutual understanding. A premiere in a university!

2022 | Senior Fellows

Let’s WeBWork together: collaboration between faculty and students for successful blended/hybrid learning
Blended-learning tools are not automatically sufficient for the students’ study success. Educational design that facilitates community building and collaboration between students is vital. We have developed a comprehensive strategy, encouraging community building and collaboration between students, aiming to humanize the online/hybrid courses, through building of trust, presence, awareness and empathy. Easy to follow step-by-step guide-lines for teachers will be produced, including a project website, instructions and instructional videos on humanizing (online/hybrid) courses and using WeBWork Open-Source platform for assignments. Students will be involved as co-creators and testers, gaining unique programming, communication and management experience.

2021 | Teaching Fellow

The project is dedicated to “Pixascope”, a software package for students and researchers to analyze large-scale visual datasets, like those that can be collected from social media platforms. Currently, much of the research on large datasets focuses on text, rather than images. This project hopes to give students the tools to use cutting-edge technology to analyze visual culture and enhance teaching and learning in RUG’s MA track in Social Media & Society. While visual platforms such as Instagram and TikTok are growing in prominence, education still prioritizes text. Pixascope hopes to change that by providing a new set of tools and an educational programme alongside them.

2020| Teaching Fellow

In the innovative Visual Thinking Strategies method, students of Academic Teacher Primary Education at the University of Groningen discuss a work of art, in order to stimulate their awareness and a critical open attitude. They then similarly discuss a video recording of a reading session in a culturally diverse kindergarten class. The aim is to positively influence knowledge, attitudes and self-efficacy (confidence in one's own abilities) with regard to cultural-ethnic diversity in the classroom. This should contribute to the development of intercultural competence of prospective teachers.

2020 | Teaching Fellow

The project focuses on exploring how all students regardless of gender could be encouraged to explore their talents to their full potential in the domain of mathematics. Aim of the project is to show that a course like Calculus can be gender inclusive with a number of small changes. Till now a lot of efforts were put by different organizations to increase the enrollment of girls into the STEM study programs, however, the research universities are still behind to take measures to retain female students.

2020 | Teaching Fellow

Many pre-service teachers feel they are insufficiently prepared for effectively managing disruptive behaviors, especially when learning is situated in a dynamic setting such as a kindergarten. Moreover, they find it challenging to translate scientific theories on classroom management into every day kindergarten teaching practices. Therefore, the main aim of our project "Keeping order in a Virtual Kindergarten Classroom" is to develop and evaluate an innovative and interactive Virtual-Reality kindergarten environment in which students of the Academic Teacher Training Program (AOLB) can safely experiment with different classroom management strategies.

2019 | Senior Fellow

Within universities, much research is conducted and there is a big focus on how to do research. Since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR, in Dutch: AVG), guarding the privacy of stakeholders has become a top priority. This project aims to teach students how to ask the right questions about privacy by helping them look at privacy issues from various perspectives (researcher, subject, legal expert, IT expert etc.). Furthermore, it will develop an approach for successfully designing, implementing and embedding responsible research methodology in interdisciplinary research. The project provides material and knowhow for the next generation of researchers.

2019 | Senior Fellow

The University of Groningen is developing an app based on insights from argumentation theory and deliberation theory that helps students conduct a deliberative debate. Information gathering, consultation and the exchange of arguments are central to this. The app also allows students to experiment with self-designed discussion formats. The aim is to create widely applicable education modules, first for bachelor's and master's students, and then for students in secondary, secondary and higher education.