News
New Doctor Stan van Ginkel
On the 23th of October 2019, Stan van Ginkel defended his thesis “Fostering Oral Presentation Competence in Higher Education” with distinction (Cum Laude) .
Presenting is considered as a core competence of the higher educated professional. However, it remains questionable how effective learning environments fostering presentation competence should be constructed. This thesis focuses on formulating evidence-based educational design principles. Further, research questions explore effective feedback processes within the context of realistic presentation skills courses. These studies verify the potential impact of feedback sources, such as teachers, peers and the self, on developing students’ presentation competence.
Besides studying the quality of differing feedback sources, Virtual Reality is studied as an alternative feedback mode fostering students’ cognition, skills and attitudes towards presenting. The constructed VR-tool, based on the principles of this thesis, is already implemented in secondary education, higher education and the corporate sector. This VR-project, based on Research & Development, received national and international media attention (see De Volkskrant and Computer Weekly).
Further, this VR-project is recently nominated by the UNESCO for the ‘ICT & Education’ Prize. Currently, as a member of the Teacher Task Force of the UNESCO, Stan advices about the effective use of Artificial Intelligence to solve the global teacher shortage.
Dr. Stan van Ginkel, Founder of VR-Lab, Institute Archimedes, University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (stan.vanginkel@hu.nl)