Teaching honours-courses and Interdisciplinarity/Transdisciplinarity
| Title | Presentation | Author |
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Gaming Literacy for Higher Education |
As systemic challenges grow, design education must foster new literacies for situated, collaborative, and reflective thinking. Gaming literacy—engaging with systems through play and design—offers a powerful framework. This presentation showcases how students develop such literacy through hacking and redesigning games to model complex systems, showing how material engagement, metaphor, and spatial reasoning foster agency and systems thinking through embodied co-design | Sarit Sarit Youdelevich and Adeline Hvidsten, Norway |
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Waddenlab, fieldtrip at sea and mud for honours students from all educations
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Waddenlab is an honours activity for students from all programmes and studies. Students prepare a session about the Wadden sea based on their own chosen theme that will be carried out during the sailing week in July, on the Wadden Sea, the water, an island or .... The central theme is: How do we keep the Wadden Sea healthy? Students learn about using their own education to approach a fairly unknown subject and need to use higher-level skills to work on the subject and work with fellow students. |
Ron Weerheijm, EHC, Netherlands |
| Taking perspective to support personal growth | Personal development is a defining feature of honours programs, often demanding pedagogical strategies that differ from those in mainstream education. We explored the role of perspective taking – the ability to empathize by understanding others’ thoughts, emotions, and motivations – as a key mechanism in fostering personal growth among honours students. Through qualitative analysis of focus group data, we identified four distinct modes that facilitate perspective change: 1) confrontation with different cultures or target groups, 2) confrontation with unknown domains or cognitive frameworks, 3) shifts in task or role, 4) self-insight. We will use these outcomes to highlight educational practices that can support personal development within honours settings and offers inspiration for regular curricula.. | Annegien Langeloo, Yvonne Zijlstra, Elanor Kamans, Hans Conijn, Netherlands |
| Making a new TRAIL in Education: innovating higher education with STEAM+ pedagogy | STEAM+ is a European ERASMUS+ funded project (www.steamtalent.eu; project number: 612869-EPP-1-2019-1-NL-EPPKA3-PI-FORWARD). STEAM+ stands for connecting STEM education and all other fields (the A in STEAM+) through transdisciplinary innovation labs (TRAIL). These labs promote hands-on, innovative approaches to teaching and learning based on the three pillars of honours pedagogy (the + in STEAM+) operationalised by Wolfensberger (2012). Talent or honours programs play a pivotal role as laboratories for educational innovation (Wolfensberger et al., 2012; Kolster, 2021; van Eijl, 2023). Combined with a transdisciplinary approach, transdisciplinary innovation labs aim to prepare students to tackle the complexity of societal challenges in a holistic way with knowledge and skills to be a change-maker. | Jan-Peter Sandlera, Belgium |
| Interdisciplinary Facilitator Program (TFP) | The Interdisciplinary Facilitator Program (TFP) supports student assistants in developing skills to create effective learning environments for collaborative knowledge sharing among educators and students. Participants become interdisciplinary facilitators, learning interdsiplinary methods to support student groups and facilitate collaboration while integrating diverse perspectives. This program consists of pedagogical training and biweekly meetings throughout the semester, with a certificate awarded upon completion. | Martine Nyheim, INTED, University of Oslo, Norway |
| Motivational profiles among honours students | In our research we found that different motivational profiles exist among honours students, which we called ‘Overall High’, ‘Knowledge oriented’, and ‘Controlled’. The results show that students can simultaneously be motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic motives. Moreover, student background variables predict profile membership. We like to use the opportunity to reflect with honors scholars and students on the potential implications for honours. | Elenor Kamans, Roorda, Langeloo, Vugteveen and Canrinus, Netherlands |
| A New TRAILtool (transdisciplinary innovative learning) tool |
Across Europe and particularly in the Netherlands universities are launching innovative educational projects that embrace transdisciplinary collaboration. However, many of these pioneering initiatives operate in isolation, lacking structured knowledge exchange and shared frameworks. As a result, recurring challenges, questions, and duplicated efforts often emerge (Tijsma, Urias & Zweekhorst, 2023). To address this gap, the newly developed TRAILtool website is presented in this poster. The TRAILtool builds on insights from STEAM+, a large-scale European project involving 18 partners from 9 countries. One of its key outcomes is the STEAM-TRAIL map (TRAnsdisciplinary Innovation Lab): an online resource designed to foster deeper collaboration, showcase practical examples, and offer concrete steps for implementation in transdisciplinary education. In the new TRAILtool teachers, students, researchers and societal partners can find their way towards transdisciplinary education. |
Julie Kurris, Maaike Mulder Nijkamp, Ewelina Schraven, Marca Wolfensberger, Netherlands |
Organizing honours education and Inter- and Transdisciplinary education
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Presentations | Author |
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Interdisciplinary Sparks: Student-Centered Learning at the School for Talents
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School for Talents at the University of Stuttgart offers an interdisciplinary honors program co-designed with students, 10 faculties, and partners from industry and society. Participants explore an annual theme from multiple perspectives through workshops and excursions, which inspire group projects that strengthen collaboration, critical thinking, and communication. The program fosters student agency and empowers them to shape their educational environment, sparking institutional change. |
Lisa Kohler and Julia Simon, Stuttgart, Germany
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| A trans-national talentprogram | We plan to develop a national talent program for teacher students from all six university colleges in Denmark. Transdisciplinarity strengthen the students’s collaborations on wicked problems and socio scientific issues in activities like case competitions and journal clubs, and courses in topics such as networking and project management. The presentation discusses ambitions and challenges in a national talent program. | Nina Troelsgaard Jensen, Denmark |
| Extra curriculum track to explore five Honours Programs goals | An extracurricular track of six sessions was designed for Honours students at Rotterdam Business School to explore the five HP goals. In collaboration with an art student, observation skills were integrated into the learning process. Activities included workshops where students pretended to be a tree to playing Fish Tank and engaging in Socratic dialogue. Pre- and post-session reflections suggest the track helped students develop key skills and attitudes aligned with the HP learning outcomes. | Isabel Solé Subirats and Vera Adriaanse, Netherlands |
| Unlocking talent: The role of honours education in Dutch Vocational Education and Training | Leontien Kragten, The Netherlands | |
| Motivational profiles among honours students | In our research we found that different motivational profiles exist among honours students, which we called ‘Overall High’, ‘Knowledge oriented’, and ‘Controlled’. The results show that students can simultaneously be motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic motives. Moreover, student background variables predict profile membership. We like to use the opportunity to reflect with honors scholars and students on the potential implications for honours. | lanor Kamans, Berber Roorda, Annegien Langeloo, Jorien Vugteveen and Esther Canrinus, Netherlands |
Student projects
| Title | Descriptions | Author |
|---|---|---|
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When ambition meets opportunity: Students’ voices from the ‘Bootcamp Spain’, an honours programme in Dutch Vocational Education and Training (VET) |
Bootcamp Spain is a Dutch honours programme of VET in which students from Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands collaborate to tackle a real-world challenge presented by an external partner—in this case, the Government of Navarra. The issue students had to address was how young people can be encouraged to spend less time online (Digital Detox), a complex and highly relevant issue for students themselves. Students had full freedom develop their own solutions to this complex issue that is both recognizable and with a sense of urgency to them. They were supported by coaches and by experts from the client. Within the limited timeframe available students used a mix of practical research, such as street interviews, and design thinking to come to practical solutions. This poster presentation highlights the benefits of this honours programme for the participating students, particularly the skills and insights they gained for their future careers—competences not easily acquired within their regular educational programme. |
Sven de Klein and Job Hamoen, Netherlands |
| Career Journey: Ethical Employment Pathways for Youth | Career Journey is a youth-driven platform tackling high unemployment in Spain, starting with the Canary Islands. Unlike traditional job boards, it only features companies committed to fair wages, stable contracts, and ethical practices. With AI-powered job matching, mentorship, and gamification, it connects young professionals with responsible employers. The pilot fosters transparency, empowerment, and long-term impact in regions most affected by precarious work. |
Miguel Pérez Hernández, Netherlands |
| Polaris: honours study association |
This poster presents Polaris, the university-wide Honours Student Association at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. It outlines the foundation of Polaris, its unique attributes, and its impact within the university. The poster emphasizes the importance of developing meaningful honours communities that engage students, lecturers, and alumni in collaborative initiatives. Our goal is to inspire other universities and applied sciences institutions to adopt similar approaches to enhance the visibility and significance of honours programs. |
Mike Schoenmakers, Kiara Lukt, Pleuntje van den Tweel, Jimme van Eijk and Annelies Riteco, Netherlands |
| From the Classroom to the Lab: Protein Binding Research and the Impact of Experiential Learning | Working with the Northern Rockies Center for Hydrodynamics, I used Analytical Ultracentrifugation (AUC) to study the binding affinity and mechanisms of the Gαi:Ric-8A protein system. Results verified protein purity, identified micromolar-range affinity, and laid groundwork for future studies on mutant Gαi and Ric-8A proteins. These findings enhance understanding of G-protein regulation and may inform novel therapeutic targets in cellular signaling. This experiential project not only advanced understanding of a key regulator in G-protein signaling but also showed the power of honors education to build independence, problem-solving, and collaboration beyond traditional coursework. | Ephraim Mortenson, University of Montana, US |
| Interdisciplinarity in higher education journals: A text embedding study. | The world is facing increasingly complex challenges, such as climate change and global pandemics, which cannot be solved within the boundaries of a single discipline. Therefore, a focus on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary higher education is important. In this report, the two are treated together under the label interdisciplinary. This report applies deductive qualitative analysis using text embedding to examine the prevalence of interdisciplinarity in two leading journals in the field of higher education. These are Higher Education and Studies in Higher Education. This approach makes it possible to systematically analyze larger volumes of text, a task that often is time consuming and resource intensive. All published research articles were analyzed to find semantic patterns, identify representative articles for interdisciplinarity and measure trends over time (since 1970). By comparing interdisciplinarity with related concepts such as monodisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity, the analysis reveals how central this has been in the discourse of higher education research in these journals. The findings suggest that perspectives on monodisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity remain dominant, while interdisciplinary approaches appear less frequent. The analysis also highlights periods during the past 50 years where articles semantically similar to interdisciplinary approaches appear more frequently. These findings reveal a gap between policy ambitions for interdisciplinarity and its limited presence in the discourse. This indicates challenges in academia’s ability to respond to complex societal demands. | Andrine Torgersen Wara, University of Oslo, Norway |
| Graph Product Representations |
This research introduces a new family of algorithms for generating expressive graph and node representations using graph products. By focusing on simple substructure counts in product graphs, the method captures structural information often missed by traditional message passing graph neural networks (MPNNs). In addition, the approach serves as an efficient isomorphism testing heuristic and demonstrates improved expressivity during MPNN training. |
Maximilian Seeliger, Austria |