What will education at EUR look like in 2024 and beyond? Our students hope that our education prepares them for the future. Not only in terms of what they learn, but also how they learn.
Our students want to learn about the highly complex problems facing local and global communities, and understand how to study and address them. That's why we train our students to be the change leaders of tomorrow - in both the public and private sectors, within their own workplaces and beyond.
We are creating an environment where students feel engaged and challenged by societal challenges from the Rotterdam region as well as international contexts during their studies. The Rotterdam region and beyond will be used as a living lab. In this way, we will strengthen the impact of our education by educating our students to become the change leaders of tomorrow.
Changing demands require students to be self-aware and critical in their personal and professional development. To teach what needs to be preached, we will train students to become critical, creative problem-solvers, enabling students to deal with undetermined or vague problems, identifying incongruities that prompt them to first explore exactly what the problem is. We help students to be personal learners, to build professional and academic competencies, and to lead and direct themselves and cooperate with others. Their involvement in educational innovation is a part of this broad development.
Building (academic) careers will remain the primary task of any university, but we also need to share the importance of freedom of mind, critical thinking and the ability to understand different standpoints. We educate students to become Erasmians. The challenges we face require an interdisciplinary, inclusive, critical, entrepreneurial and pioneering mindset.
We develop Erasmian educators into educational leaders: inspiring team players, surrounded by interdisciplinary learning teams consisting of educational professionals, learning technicians and content specialists and supported by advanced tools. We will also make use of our diverse community of highly motivated students as co-creators: we will engage them in designing our education. We will give room to research in education and focus on creating impact, which will make education more fun (and more curiosity-driven). Complex innovations designed to improve educational quality will not be approached with one single-minded method.
We will make room for personal and personalised learning by investing in technology. We provide a toolkit for all students to enhance personal development and growth, including an instrument (still requiring further development) that enables students to create their own personal learning path.
Alumni can help us achieve our goals in terms of impact and education. They are our ambassadors, participants in our curricula, and our friendly source of constructive criticism on education in the context of quality. We ensure that alumni are part of our academic community, engaged as stakeholders and co-creators.
In creating a learning society, lifelong learning is fundamental to meet the challenges of economic and societal change and sustainable development that we face today. Lifelong learning serves Erasmus alumni by providing extraordinary resources throughout their professional lives.