When I was out in Breda I did my best to use 'the Netherlands' when talking about the country I was in. Holland is part of the Netherlands, not all of it, yet the man on the Clapham omnibus tends to use the words interchangeably. I asked for a local view... Holland seems to be used in general, but when the Dutch are being serious (or are in trouble) they reach for Nederland.
Being a serious type I kept with the extra syllables.
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With a couple of week's distance since the students from Breda came to Edinburgh here are four bullet pointed lessons to take from their visit and what they value in their course:
- As a university department, full of staff and students interested in events, there's scope to develop closer links with local venues in order to support student opportunities to put on work. A more concerted, ongoing effort to encourage student events in appropriate venues could be a great way to further integrate what we're doing at Edinburgh Napier with successful parts of the city's events sector.
- Project management and event design can be built into more elements of the curriculum, providing a framework within which formative and summative assessments can be developed, monitored and built upon.
- There's scope for me, in particular, to promote Erasmus exchanges, particularly with NHTV Breda.
- Structured primary research has a place in the earlier years of the course than is currently the case, in my modules at least.
I'll return to this post when preparing for the next academic year, but for now these are more thoughts to ponder ??? more grist to the mill. To some extent it's a matter of degrees, or perhaps a formalising of existing activity, but small steps could yield meaningful rewards.