Stimulating formative actions with Awards

Annika Boh, coordinator of the talent programmes at the Faculty of Law, excitedly talks about the insights she and lecturer Simon Tans have gathered during the past 2.5 years of Law in Action. The goal of Law in Action is to stimulate students to work on skills that are important in the real world, such as providing feedback, collaborating, interviewing, and presenting. These skills are used when students work on (stimulated) case studies from the juridical world, where students reflect on what they learn. The reflections are created based on Awards in Brightspace. “In the beginning students found it difficult to understand what we wanted from them. Reflecting is usually new, and students think it is hard.” explains Annika. They guide the students when they are working on achieving Awards and the first Award is linked to a mandatory assignment, so the students quickly realise what they are supposed to do.

With the Awards you constantly achieve new goals for yourself. This is very motivating.
Student Lieke de Groot

Students submit their work on Brightspace. Feedback is provided, and if it is a good reflection students will receive one of the Awards. With 15 Awards they have gathered sufficient insights to successfully complete the course. There are 20 different Awards to obtain. “Many different Awards are chosen and obtained, which is fun to see.” is Annika’s answer to the question whether students actually use this freedom to choose. 

Student Lieke is almost at three quarters of the programme. She has received six Awards and is waiting on feedback on four more. “The Awards have been formulated very broadly; they merely paint a framework, which means that you can write an Award how you desire. It is also nice to have several small assignments which (partially) determine how you do in Law in Action rather than a final assessment. With the Awards you achieve the different components for yourself, which is very motivating. It is also nice that there is no deadline (apart from the end of the programme), because this means that you can focus on writing a certain Award if a situation present itself where a certain Award is suitable.” In addition to this positive feedback, Lieke also has a critical note: being clear about expectations and proper guidance are essential to let students get used to the freedom the Awards give them.