Vision

The faculty’s students and staff are characterized by increasing diversity in language, qualifications, and cultural background. The faculty wants to offer all of its students a safe and inclusive learning environment that encourages them to push their boundaries, take risks, make mistakes and be proud of their successes.

At the start of their Bachelor’s degree programme, students will follow course units shared by related degree programmes, making it easy to choose a related programme after the first Bachelor’s year. These flexible Bachelor’s programmes will appeal to prospective students and ensure a steady annual intake of around 1,200 students. The Bachelor’s programme will teach students 21st-century skills and can serve both as a qualification for the job market and as preparation for a specialized Master’s degree programme. A carefully considered range of Master’s tracks will provide an in-depth follow-up to the Bachelor’s programme. Collaboration with the universities of applied sciences will simplify the transition for students with a degree or a diploma for the propaedeutic phase from a university of applied sciences.

The slight drop in the percentage of Dutch students resulting from falling numbers of secondary school pupils with an arts profile and the demographic decline in the Northern Netherlands will be compensated by an increase in the intake of international students. Our programmes will be internationally oriented if this has intrinsic value, for example, because it ensures a good fit with the international labour market. Lecturers will master the skills and competences they need to ensure that all students feel included. Students will benefit from the international and intercultural learning experiences they gain during our degree programmes.

We will offer students an interactive learning environment revolving around dialogue: students will learn from experienced lecturers and each other. Lecturers will make well-considered choices between in-person and online modes of instruction, bearing in mind that online modes of instruction always serve to supplement in-person teaching. Students will prepare for their lectures by studying the teaching material online or in books. The traditional time slots (2 x 45 minutes) and group sizes (20 students) will gradually be replaced by large-scale written and practical assignments, which will sometimes transcend the customary boundaries of disciplines. The Cluster Boards, in consultation with the programme coordinators and lecturers, will choose modes of instruction that correspond to the learning objectives and the number of hours allocated for teaching, bearing in mind that in-person teaching will continue to be the guiding principle.

Lectures given by our impassioned researchers will trigger our students’ enthusiasm for the discipline and involve them in academic research at an early stage. The digital turn taking place in the world of research will also be reflected in the attention paid to digital literacy in our teaching. Students will work with digital systems and teaching aids, including analyzing and contextualizing big data, studying contemporary and historical phenomena and place these in the proper context. In line with our research, students will learn to link academic knowledge and skills from the humanities to other academic domains. The emphasis on research skills in the Research Master’s programmes will help many of the Research Master’s students to find a PhD position after graduation.

The competences that students acquire will be clear for every course unit, and our teaching programmes will be devised along clear learning pathways. Assessments will not only serve to test students’ performance but also give them an idea of their progress in terms of the learning outcomes. For this reason, evaluations will be more formative (feedback), and competences will not be reassessed for every course unit. Having students write articles and policy documents to assess their qualifications will be encouraged to prepare them for the labour market. Students will be able to complete their Bachelor’s programme by presenting a graduation portfolio demonstrating their knowledge and competences (instead of writing a thesis). They will be properly supervised throughout their degree programmes, so that they have time to make well-considered choices and avoid study stress. This will result in shorter study durations and improved success rates.