Purpose In collaboration with their home cities, universities increasingly develop courses in which students investigate urban sustainability challenges. This paper aims to understand how far-reaching the collaboration with urban stakeholders in these courses is and what students are meant to learn from the transdisciplinary pedagogies. Design/methodology/approach This research is designed as a qualitative multiple-case study into the intentions of transdisciplinary courses in which universities collaborate with their home cities: Delft University of Technology in Delft and Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions in Amsterdam. The study compares the written intentions of eight courses in course descriptions with the ideal intentions that teachers describe in interviews. Findings First, seven of the eight investigated courses were designed for urban stakeholders to participate at a distance or as a client but rarely was a course intended to lead to a collaborative partnership between the city and students. Second, the metacognitive learning objectives, such as learning to deal with biases and values of others or getting to know one’s strengths and weaknesses in collaboration, were often absent in the course descriptions. Learning objectives relating to metacognition are at the heart of transdisciplinary work, yet when they remain implicit in the learning objectives, they are difficult to teach. Originality/value This paper presents insight into the levels of participation intended in transdisciplinary courses. Furthermore, it shows the (mis)alignment between intended learning objectives in course descriptions and teachers’ ideals. Understanding both the current state of transdisciplinarity in sustainability courses and what teachers envision is vital for the next steps in the development of transdisciplinary education. @en

The Covid-19 pandemic prompted a rapid shift to online education. The 4TU.Centre for Engineering Education (4TU.CEE), initiated thewriting of a white paper. The authors present a research synthesis conducted across the four Universities of Technology in the Netherlands (hereafter the 4TUs). They also reflect on what the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to our education system. Based on the synthesis results, they provide policymakers with implications relevant to the (immediate) responseto continued pandemic-related restrictions. At the same time, they signal that digital education offers new opportunities for both scaling up and quality improvement to actively shape a preferred future for teaching. @en

Structural Mechanics (SM) is a fundamental subject in engineering bachelor curricula. Since experimental investigations play a central role in the discipline, laboratory practice is often present in SM courses. Many instructors recognize in laboratory activities, not only a way to develop laboratory skills and appreciation of the scientific method, but also a chance to reinforce students’ conceptual understanding of the discipline. However, there is evidence that laboratory instruction is not always successful in achieving conceptual understanding. To address this problem, the goal of the presented study is to investigate how laboratory activities can be designed to support students' conceptual understanding of SM. First, the disciplinary body of knowledge is analysed through Johnstone’s model of multilevel thought. In SM, as in Physics and in Chemistry, phenomena are analysed at different scales: the phenomenological level, the invisible level, and the symbolic level. The understanding of most Structural Mechanics concepts relies on linking the phenomenological world to the underlying invisible world using symbolic representations such as equations, diagrams, experimental data plots, and physics models. To transition and translate between “levels of thoughts” and understand SM concepts, representational competence and abilities in model-based reasoning are needed. In the next paragraphs, a review of successful studies from similar subjects is presented, where the learning activities targeted representations and model reasoning in laboratory settings. The findings are summarised in a set of design guidelines to help instructors develop successful laboratory learning activities for SM.@en

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is increasingly on the higher education agenda. In many universities of technology in the Netherlands, CBL is being implemented in engineering education programmes to prepare students to work on authentic, complex, societal challenges, provided by partners from outside of the university. Making societal impact is an important driver the introduction of CBL, however, on a more pedagogical level, little is known about the motivational aspects of student learning in these challenge-based transdisciplinary courses.@en