TU/e Best Teacher Awards

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND CHEMISTRY

Ivo can take complex subjects and break them down into easy-to-understand concepts using a personal approach. He creates an engaging and interactive environment that fosters open communication and encourages students to explore different perspectives. By the end of the course, students not only have a strong grasp of the material but also a newfound love for learning.  

Ivo actively seeks the opinions of students on specific issues and is receptive to constructive suggestions for improvement. He interacts with students on a personal level, fostering an environment in which students feel comfortable discussing areas of difficulty and seeking guidance.  

A key advantage of Ivo's teaching approach is his use of diverse didactic strategies and presentation formats, including authoring his own concise and relevant course materials, writing his own course books, and providing pen casts to facilitate self-paced learning. He believes there is no silver bullet in an educational strategy, but we should select the best practices from a diverse palette of approaches. 

Ivo inspires students to pursue their passions with confidence and curiosity. 

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

One of the courses Claudia teaches, was known as the most difficult course of the whole bachelor's program and only a limited number of students succeeded in this course. Claudia redesigned the course, based on the flipped classroom concept. The level of the course is still high, but Claudia's way of teaching is very motivating and effective for students. The course is now seen as a challenging and interesting one.  

Claudia provides ‘practical lectures’ where she combines theory with problems from practice. In these special lectures where past exam questions are used, she encourages students to ask questions or have discussions with each other. Students feel comfortable: they know that even if their answer is wrong, they learn a lot from interacting during those sessions. Because of this, the sessions are very interactive, and students learn a lot. 
 
Claudia puts a lot of effort into creating a well-structured course set-up and into giving clear lectures. She really aims at making the material manageable, strives for her students to understand the material rather than just memorizing it. Her answers during the tutor hours are comprehensive and show passion for the topic and for transferring as much knowledge as possible to the students. She is extremely involved in helping students that do not understand a certain topic. For all students, it is very evident that she loves what she is doing. She teaches with passion and is extremely dedicated to her course and always helpful to students.

Claudia teaches with passion and is always helpful to students. 

INNOVATION SCIENCES

Erik considers it a privilege to guide and walk alongside students towards the future. He is interested in understanding the bigger picture of how society works and how (technological) choices influence it. He wants to educate students with skills on how to contribute to sustainable change in the world. For this change to happen, it is essential to educate people who can think multi-disciplinary and outside the box, using various well-founded perspectives. That is exactly where Erik focuses on in his course. 
 
Erik has moved away from college-driven education and uses the flipped classroom concept. Students read the material at home before the lecture. This gives them the opportunity to already think about the material. The first hour of his lecture students discuss the content in a group. Erik then asks them to write answers to certain questions on the blackboard, or questions they have themselves. In the second hour Erik discusses the stuff the students have written on the board and answers their questions.  
 
Erik puts emphasis on learning to think rather than absorbing knowledge from lectures. Students are asked to reflect on what they already know, what they are learning, and the relationship between the two. This is something students can also use outside of the classroom; they can take this with them for the rest of their life. 
 

Erik considers it a privilege to guide and walk alongside students towards the future. 

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

Karel can transfer knowledge in a motivating and clear way. He is super friendly, always energetic, and very patient, especially when helping students to solve the problems themselves.  
 
He is not a teacher who only sticks to traditional lectures. For example, he also created video recordings in which a difficult part of the course is explained once again in a compact and clear way. He also created videos where students of last year explained a difficult exercise, which helps new students, since they get a different view of how such an exercise can be solved. 
 
In his courses, Karel focuses on connecting theory with real-life practice. He uses a lot of real-life cases in his courses and provides guest lectures given by companies. He wants to show the students how their theoretical background gained on the course can be used in the field and in the students’ professional future. 

Karel is always open to discussions and answering questions, even before or after the lectures. He creates an atmosphere, in which students feel comfortable asking questions and diving deeper into the different topics. 

Karel wants to show the students how their theoretical background gained on the course can be used in the field and in the students’ professional future.