Students strengthen learning culture within organisations
‘The course is set up as a pop-up consultancy company, where lecturers act as senior consultants in cooperation with students as junior consultants,’ says Frank Cornelissen, professor of Innovation in Education and coordinator of the Learning and Innovating in Organisations course. In teams, students work with a lecturer for 12 weeks on a real-life assignment for an organisation from the for-profit or non-profit sector. After that period, the students present their advice and recommendations to the organisation.
Room for in-depth development
During the course, there is also room for in-depth development through deep dives into a particular topic, such as change management or the question of what exactly constitutes a learning environment. This also gives students a more theoretical perspective, which they can then use for their assignments.
From wait-and-see to independence
Frank Cornelissen: ‘What I personally like is how students’ attitudes change once they take this course. Some come in taking a wait-and-see approach, like a consumer: “you teach and I’ll listen”. By contrast, they have to work on their own. This ensures that they quickly become very independent and take responsibility. They have a real-life assignment with real-life expectations from a client, so real things happen that you also encounter in professional consulting practice.’
The Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) has a knowledge portal that does not quite meet the needs of its cooperating organisations.
The portal contains information on such things as procedures, ballistics and DNA testing. Besides NFI employees, cooperating organisations such as the Public Prosecution Service, courts and police also have access to the portal. Lecturer Bas de Jong: ‘In the field of DNA alone, developments are moving fast, so information needs to be updated often. However, that comes on top of the other work of the institute’s staff.'
The students interviewed nine NFI staff members. The institute itself had already collected information from cooperating organisations. Based on this information, the students made a number of key recommendations, such as appointing a staff member to ensure the information is up to date and setting up a clear authorisation structure: who is allowed to see what information? Two other key recommendations were to ensure good findability and visibility of the portal and give employees time to enter information into the portal properly.