Do you want to actively work on real-life issues? Do you want to set societal change in motion? Discover the innovative elective Change Making. Change Making is an action-oriented programme where students and professionals work closely together as co-learners. This edition has the theme co-creating a Healthy Future.  

During “Change Making; Healthy Future”, students initiate, create, and evaluate innovative transitionexperiments together with societal professionals. There are all sorts of urgent societal health-related issues that require cross-disciplinary collaboration, like keeping high-quality care available when you need it and how to support a healthy lifestyle. Essentially, students and professionals work together on a transition issue, using the transition cycle as the leading approach.  

We envision how a healthy future might look like to guide the experiments. Examples are: 

• What if healthy foods were convenient, appealing, and affordable?
• What if healthcare prioritized people's overall health, rather than just treating illnesses? 
• What if technology truly contributed to health and vitality? 
• What if everyone had access to the same level of healthcare, regardless of their background?
• What if getting outside and connecting with nature was just as important as any other treatment. 
• What if healthcare was more about neighborhoods, communities and families than hospitals? 

What is Change Making? 

Change Making goes beyond traditional education and uses the Transition Cycle. It has the following unique features: 

• Co-learning: students and professionals from the field genuinely work together, doing so from various disciplinary perspectives and areas of expertise. 

•  Joint vision formation: Change Makers create a shared vision for the future. They do this by employing imagination and innovative thinking and breaking through prevailing systems. 

•  Interventions in the real world: Change Makers go beyond theory by jointly carrying out small-scale, real interventions.  

• Emphasis on reflection and personal growth: Change Makers learn to know their own motivations and capabilities. 

Themes 

The theme of the course differs every half-year. The coming semester (block 5 & 6 of the academic year 2024-2025) will focus on cocreating Healthy Future. The following semesters will cover the themes of Fair & Resilient society (block 1 & 2, 2025-2026), and Digitalisation (block 5 & 6, 2025-2026).  

Coordinator

Tjerk Jan Schuitmaker-Warnaar  

Timetable

Students have class three times a week from 10 AM until 1 PM. You can find the timetable on Datanose.  

Admission Requirements 

This 12 ECTS elective is suitable for all UvA Bachelor's students. Students need to have acquired at least 60 ECTS in their bachelor's degree before starting this elective. 

Summary: 

• Theme: Healthy Future 
• Credits: 12 ECTS 
• Teaching period: block 5 & 6  
• Location: REC 
• Small-scale education: 25 students + 5 co-learners per theme  
• Language of instruction: English (and Dutch, if possible within your team) 

Application and Admission 

A maximum of 25 students can participate in this course. UvA Bachelor's students can register from 2 to 9 December 2024 in the GLASS registration rounds. Master’s students can send a short motivation to keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

‘Bijvak’ students and contract students can register from 2 December 2024 until one week prior to the start of the course, by completing the online registration form.

If you have any trouble while registering, please contact us at keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl.

Costs

Prices can be found on the IIS website.

SDGs in education

The IIS strives to reflect current societal issues and challenges in our elective courses, honours modules and degree programmes, and attempts to integrate the following Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in this course. For more information about these goals, please visit the SDGs website

More information

If you have any questions, please email keuzeonderwijs-iis@uva.nl. The Course Catalogue information will become available later this month.