Factors Related to Student Achievement in Medical School

The goal of the studies in this thesis is to find factors to predict more reliably which subgroups of students will encounter what kind of problems in which study phase in medical school. To that purpose, the relationship between factors related to the student, the curriculum and the social environment on one side and student achievement on the other is investigated for both distinctive study phases and subgroups of students. One of the main outcomes of this thesis is a very useful model for the early and reliable prediction of students who will fail to pass the first-year curriculum within two years of study. By using this model we are able to identify at 6 months from the start a manageable group of students for a short remedial support programme. It is also shown that too many of our students would be dismissed on non-rational grounds at the end of the first year of study, if we would only use their number of credits obtained as selection criterion. Based on this latter finding the Binding Study Advice regulation in our medical school has been adapted

Digit@l Did@ctics: Development of Teaching Staff

In: A.J. Kallenberg and M.J.J.M. van de Ven (Eds), 2002, The New Educational Benefits of ICT in Higher Education: Proceedings. Rotterdam: Erasmus Plus BV, OECR ISBN 90-9016127-9This paper presents an innovative way of development of teaching staff. Teachers prefer to learn and to receive support 'just in time'. As an answer to this demand this project has developed an educational knowledge base containing didactical materials and an educational call centre

Changes in examination practices reduce procrastination in university students

The purpose of the study reported here was to observe the effects of examination practices on the extent to which university students procrastinate. These examination practices were: (1) limiting the number of resits, (2) compensatory rather than conjunctive decision-making about student progress, and (3) restricting the time available for completing the first bachelor year. Study success in the first academic year (successful completion within one year, delay, or dropout) of 12,432 students entering a Dutch university before the introduction of the new examination practices was compared with that of 17,036 students admitted after its introduction. After the implementation of the new examination practices successful completion increased with 23% and delay decreased with 25%. The data were collected using an interrupted time series design. Three attempts were made to deal with possible threats to its internal validity. (1) Potential confounding variables were demonstrated not to play a role in explaining the effect of the new examination practices. (2) Interrupted time series regression demonstrated that the intervention, not other changes over time, contributed to study success. And (3), extraneous events interfering with the effect of the intervention were shown to be unlikely. In conclusion, the study presented here is the first to demonstrate the effect of examination rules on study delay. The findings indicate that delays, as usually observed in higher education, are not necessarily