VU Connects: matching platform for teachers and community partners

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2 July 2024

Many VU teachers aim to engage students in real societal issues through forms of Engaged Learning. Despite the numerous successful collaborative initiatives at VU, such as Community Service Learning, Competencies for Transformation, the Green Office, and the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute, finding suitable partners remains a "time-consuming and complex task" according to teachers. VU Connects offers the solution: an innovative matching platform, currently in its pilot phase, that connects supply and demand, simplifying collaboration between teachers and community partners.

Education coordinators and teachers can register their courses on the VU Connects matching platform, allowing various community organizations to contact teachers and vice versa. Camille Bressers, project manager at Community Service Learning, states: "We are already seeing some organizations and teachers registering on the platform. Our ultimate goal is to simplify both the implementation of an Engaged Learning approach and the process of finding stakeholders for collaboration. This way, more organizations can find us, and teachers can more easily determine which course fits which organization."

Why VU connects?

• Centralized platform: bringing together various collaboration partners, VU initiatives, teachers, and students in one place saves time and effort.
• Direct access to collaboration opportunities: teachers can create a challenge 'space' for their course or assignment, to which community partners can respond. If there are no suitable courses online, partners can create an open challenge that teachers can respond to, promoting quicker interaction between education and practice.
• Network building: partners can register, view all courses, contact teachers, and vice versa.
• Inclusivity: both commercial and non-profit organizations are welcome, providing a wide range of collaboration opportunities in diverse contexts.

Support for teachers
The VU Connects team is ready to guide you in using the platform. This includes practical assistance with registration, filling out collaboration requests, searching for collaborations, and adding open challenges or courses. An informative webinar on July 16 will explain how the platform works and how to make optimal use of it as a teacher. Sign up here!

To connect with community partners and present your course, you can register on the platform. Need to see how it works first or need help with registration or filling out the form? Schedule a demo with Bram Kuijken from Master Challenge.

Free use in 2024
VU Connects will be launched as a pilot throughout 2024. During this period, teachers can use the platform for free, and feedback will be collected to further improve the platform. "We want to reach as many teachers as possible and invite them to participate in this pilot. The platform is designed to ease the work of teachers, so their feedback is crucial to determine if this is the right solution and how we can further perfect it," says Camille. "This pilot year offers teachers the opportunity to use this new tool for finding partners and to directly influence the further development of the platform while continuing their Engaged Learning approach." This pilot was made possible with funding from the CSL-Broadermind team.

Ending fragmentation
For the first time, VU Connects brings together the various teams within VU that are involved in collaborative initiatives with community partners.

Soesja van Wijgerden, who played a key role in setting up this initiative from March 2023 to December 2023, contributed with her network to reach out to teachers and colleagues to shape the platform. Neele van den Bongardt from the Amsterdam Sustainability Institute is also actively involved in the development and implementation of VU Connects: "We have spoken to many teachers and staff to understand their needs and to determine whether a platform like this would be useful. Through this collaboration between VU initiatives, we can achieve more than if we all continue to work in our own bubbles."

For questions or further details, email [email protected].