Seems a bit foolish to write an extensive post on the Dutch style of university education since, you know, I only had the privilege of experiencing it for just over a month. So consider this somewhat of a supplement before I write another post about life under lockdown away from my home country.
My brief time spent in lectures at Radboud bought an interesting mixture of stuff that I have experienced both back home and in Hong Kong. Seminars are a mainstay of some of my lectures (With the exception of American Identities and American Pop Culture, which only consist of a weekly lecture). But such sessions can also go on for just under three hours, with a brief break in the middle to refresh oneself. Activities are sometimes included for the sake of class participation, in the case of my literature courses these will typically revolve around the analysis of extracts from assigned reading.
As in Hong Kong, I’ve been given a greater deal of flexibility about the courses I can choose, and thus have elected to try my hand at some literature-based ones (Them being British, Canadian, and American literature), alongside some courses in modern American history. Nothing too particularly ground-breaking, but most of the lecturers have a great knack for teaching the content and going into detail.
Radboud has a good variety of teaching and learning spaces (Well, perhaps I should say HAD), including a rather sizable library and learning hub that has most of the required learning materials I need both offline and online. Really the only negative thing I can say about it is that I never really got a chance to take much use of it before the lockdown happened.
I think that’s just about all there is to it then. My apologies for not giving as detailed an entry I would have liked, but it’s kind of hard to do so when you’ve spent more time watching lectures in your apartment then you have in a lecture theater. But that’s for another blog post.
