Nine winning courses of Excellent Education Prize 2021

In March 2020, our education had to switch from on-campus to online education due to measures related to the covid-19 pandemic. It was decided, therefore, to split the Excellent Education Prize for the academic year 2019-2020 into courses given before (period 1-4) and during the covid-19 pandemic (period 5-6).
As a result, there are nine winning courses this year rather than four: five courses from the period before covid-19, and four courses from the periods during the covid-19 pandemic.

From the jury report: “The jury was impressed about the continuing efforts of teachers to provide WUR students with excellent courses, also in times of crisis. It was a real pleasure to evaluate the nominated courses and to come to a ranking.”

Compliments

The Jury complements the winners (see quotes of the Jury):

From the periods before corona:

• Basic courses: Forest resources: “Highly appreciated by the participating students’ and Fundamentals of landscape ‘truly multidisciplinary”
• Advanced courses: Social justice, Technology and Development: “Students mentioned that this course should be made obligatory for the whole university”
• Specialized courses: Empowerment for Sustainability: “Stimulates critical thinking and is interactive”
• Large courses: Ecological Methods: “Students get captured by the topic ('it made me like statistics')”

From the periods during the covid-19 pandemic:

• Basic courses: Political Sociology for Development: “Due to different types of learning methods, group work and the use of polls students kept engaged during long lectures”
• Advanced courses: Methodologies for reading sustainable foodscapes: “Methodologies can be 'dry' stuff, but apparently in this course they were taught in a 'juicy' way”
• Specialized courses: Ethnobotany: “The jury found it very creative to see that home practicals could be done”
• Large courses: Structure and function of plants: “A perfect example of how a course can be taught online”