A personalised, practice-based learning track for PhD candidates

There is a growing concern about the poor quality of animal research, often caused by the lack of a properly set up experimental design. With the ambition to improve the quality of animal research in the future Utrecht University, University Medical Center Utrecht and The Animal Welfare Body Utrecht have combined their forces. With Life Long Learning as an instigator for discussion, the three institutes are contributing to the change of the unruly research culture. A first step towards this ambition is the development of a personalized, workplace-based learning track for PhD students in animal research. Educational Design Research (EDR) was used as a methodological framework. The aim of EDR is to both design an intervention as a solution to a complex educational problem, as well as to advance our knowledge about characteristics of these interventions and the process to design them. The design process has led to a learning track that consists of several online and face to face learning activities, based on the concepts of: connectivism, personalized learning and workplace-based learning. The pilot, planned at the end of 2019, hopefully gives us first insights in both the effectivity of the learning track as well as the instructional design itself.