Newsletter

Newsletter December 2023

Dear Transition Maker,

With the year drawing to a close, we are reflecting on the incredible journey we've shared in 2023. We launched transitionmakers.nl with 23 tools for 18 of the Inner Development Goals, which have reached over 2,300 downloads so far, attended various educational conferences in the Netherlands and the IDG Summit in Stockholm, and hosted several events and workshops within the Netherlands and beyond, where we’ve made valuable connections with other educators with their minds and hearts open to transition-focused education.

As we take a moment to pause and look back, we are truly grateful for each and every one of you who have been a part of our community. Your feedback and contributions this year have been invaluable.

There are exciting plans in the works for next year, which fill us with optimism and enthusiasm:

✨ New tools, that are being co-created as we speak, will be added to the Toolbox in February and March. Stay tuned for tools for Inclusive Mindset and Intercultural Competence, Communication Skills, Perspective Skills and Long-term Orientation and Visioning!

📆 You can sign up now for one of the ‘Unlock the Potential of the Toolbox for Your Education’ workshops coming up in the beginning of 2024. We are in Eindhoven on 22 January, online on Zoom on 20 February, in The Hague on 19 March and in Groningen on 18 April.

🎩 Teachers or educational developers, affiliated with a Dutch higher education institution, with ideas for new tools can join our upcoming co-creation session in May and June. Find more details below.

We wish you all a wonderful year-end holiday with lots of relaxation and good times. May 2024 be full of inspiration and joy!

More Tools in the Works

Together with educators from the University of Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and InHolland University of Applied Sciences, we are co-creating new tools to be included in the Transition Makers Toolbox in 2024. Several tools for Inclusive Mindset and Intercultural Competence, Communication Skills, Perspective Skills and Long-term Orientation and Visioning are coming soon!

The Toolbox Team on Tour

Last month, the Toolbox team attended the National Interdisciplinary Education (NIE) conference, organised by the EWUU alliance in Wageningen. During our workshop, we discussed the possibilities of implementing the IDGs and the tools in regular education. In addition, we spoke with many visitors who were interested in our work. We hope that we inspired more teachers to consider implementing the IDGs in their education; whether it is to use the tools in the Toolbox, or to become a maker and add new exiting tools themselves.

We also recently hosted a workshop at the Empower the Student conference on developing broad skills at Fontys Hogeschool in Tilburg, a meaningful opportunity to connect with professionals from various higher education institutions, committed to exploring the concept of inner development in education.

The Transition Makers card deck facilitated insightful discussions among the participants, that highlighted the growing interest and necessity of incorporating inner development into educational frameworks. We look forward to keeping in touch with these teachers about new tools for the Toolbox!

Join our LinkedIn community to become a member of the IDG Dutch Higher Education Hub and learn, innovate, practice and share the application of tools or share stories, recordings of lectures, event designs and presentations with other Transition Makers.

Mark your Calendar

Workshop: Unlock the Potential of the Toolbox for Your Education

In this interactive session, you will discover the features of the Transition Makers Toolbox and find out how to use the tools in your teaching, so you can start putting the materials into practice.

Join us on site in Eindhoven on 22 January, in The Hague on 19 March or in Groningen on 18 April.

See all upcoming events

Online Workshop: Unlock the Potential of the Toolbox for Your Education

on 20 February 2024 from 3 to 4.30 PM (Central European Time), on Zoom

We cordially invite those of you that are not able to join us on-site in the Netherlands to participate in this online workshop. The content is essentially the same, adapted into an online format to cater to our international audience.

Join the online workshop

Co-creation Session in 2024: Add your Tool to the Toolbox

Are you an educational professional at a Dutch higher education institution, and would you like to add a new tool to the Toolbox?

If you have a teaching or learning activity paired with an assessment method, related to societal transitions and one of the IDGs, that you would like to add to the Transition Makers Toolbox, this session is for you!

It could be a tool that is new to you that you want to start using in your education practice, or a tool that you are already working with and would like to share in and/or further develop for the Transition Makers Toolbox.

The first co-creation session will take place on 13 May from 9 am – 1 pm.
The follow-up session is on 13 June from 1 – 5 pm. Both sessions will be held on-site in Amsterdam.

Please note, it is important to know the source of the tool and to have permission to share the tool in the Toolbox.

This guarantees a key characteristic of our Toolbox: the material we will share in the Toolbox is open source.

This means that the tools we end up sharing will be accessible for anyone to use, redistribute and modify at no cost.

Interested in co-creating? Contact us!

Meaningful Assessment

In this practical handbook for university teachers, authors Ilja Boor (co-founder of the Toolbox), Debby Gerritsen, Linda de Greef and Jessica Rodermans call for an assessment strategy with a greater emphasis on assessment for and assessment as learning, with a focus on giving powerful feedback and the use of authentic assessment tasks, and alignment with the intended learning outcomes and your pedagogical beliefs.

If you are looking for ways to assess integration, collaboration, reflection and critical thinking rather than only assessing the acquisition of knowledge, the examples in this handbook are inspiring initiatives that can point you to new directions in assessment.