Beleidsplannen van rector Rik Torfs en K Leuven. Is de vernieuwing en het terugdringen van de bureaucratie en van de invloed van de pedagoochelaars ingezet?

Zopas publiceerde rector Rik Torfs ‘Policy Progress Report: the past months’ Education ( January 2014 We citeren het stuk over ‘education’ (nieuw onderwijsconcept). In the area of university education, we emphasise a substantive reflection on the character of university education. To a lesser extent, we address the increasing regulatory and structural hindrances of providing a university education.

We are working towards an education concept centred around the integral personal development of each individual student, and this in the context of the university understood as a learning and research community. Another guiding principle is to make students aware of their role in and responsibility toward society. KU Leuven will leverage the expertise of its research communities to provide the building blocks for degree programmes in which students develop disciplinary maturity and interdisciplinary openness.

The faculties, which will play a central role in reflecting on this renewed education concept, will receive resources from the Education Development Fund to give shape to and implement this concept in their faculty-specific context. Given the expertise accumulated in the past as a teaching campus, Kulak will take on a pilot role in this. The newly established Education Strategy Cell will provide substantive input for developing and implementing the renewed education concept.

We have also begun the process of shortening and simplifying of the existing Education and Examination Regulations (OER). A number of substantive revisions are currently being prepared. One very important change, which has already been approved by the Academic Council, regards compensatory rules effective at the start of the 2014-15 academic year: a student who has received a single mark of 9/20 for a course which is not considered non-compensatory, and which conforms to the relevant criteria, will now be considered as passing. In all other cases, a single mark of 9/20 must be deliberated by the relevant examination committee, which must determine whether the student has met the objectives for the course, and must motivate this determination. This broad-based amendment to the compensatory rules is not only a response to recent decisions taken in examination dispute cases, but also align with the vision that examination decisions should be made in a more collegial manner and that deliberation committees should regain a more active role.

We have also simplified the structure of the Educational Policy Offices. The previous overarching structure of 'DOeL' (Department for Education and Learning) has been abolished and the three existing Educational Policy offices, which will now be directly coordinated by the Vice Rector for Educational Policy, have been given more responsibility. We have also regrouped the expansion and availability of digital educational technologies into a new unit, 'LIMEL' (Leuven Institute for Media and Learning),