Blog Nienke Rovers: Feedback? Yes, please!

A couple of weeks ago, we received an e-mail from Rob Leijssen (a recently graduated student from BIS) with his findings on TU/e SkillsLab. He told us that even though he really liked SkillsLab and appreciated the initiative, he also missed some important content. Since we value any kind of feedback highly, we asked Rob if he wanted to drink a cup of coffee with us and chat about his e-mail and other suggestions he has for SkillsLab.

So there we were, Rob, Thijs (Guild Leader Presentation Skills), and I (Nienke, Guild Leader Teamwork Skills).  After we had ordered the delicious coffee in the canteen of the Metaforum, we sat down and started talking about SkillsLab. What did Rob think that was missing, and what could we do to further improve SkillsLab?

First of all Rob told us that you can find great free courses online, for example on Coursera. He also said that he found it odd that there were only so few TED Talks on SkillsLab, considering the fact that these presentations can be very informative and instructive.

Furthermore Rob told us that while most students might be little familiar with SkillsLab, the platform doesn’t have any real integration with their own faculty’s curriculum. Wouldn’t it be an idea to integrate SkillsLab in certain lectures that ask (for example) good teamwork or presentation skills from the students?

We started brainstorming on how students would like to use SkillsLab and the available content? Is adding more offline necessary? Should students be able to bookmark the content they like best? Are other skills or subskills than provided currently also important for students?

After this interesting conversation, Thijs and I decided to take action immediately. We have added some interesting Coursera courses (check for example the course Introduction to public speaking), planned a Teamwork workshop for all students that follow the Catalysis: Science and Technology course and of course we are watching as many TED Talks as possible so that we can offer you the best selection (what do you think about this talk byJulian Treasure?) !

Do you have any suggestions, tips or other feedback for us? Let us hear from you.

(If you find a coffee date a step too far, just sending us an e-mail will do, too. :) )You can always reach us by the contact form or via SkillsLab@tue.nl