Jacqueline Akkermans succesfully defended the Thesis for her Master of Education (MEd) on December 17. Jacqueline did her thesis work within Van Oord, whom many may not know, but think of the Palm Island of Dubai; they co-constructed that. Ring a bell? The title of the thesis is ‘Moving from Training to Performance’, which is a relatively old theme in social science, but still very current for the learning and development profession in many places of the world. Based on various sources, Jacqueline drafted a competence framework for learning and development professionals as performance consultants. Also, not new, but still needed. What appears to be the case is that performance consultancy seems to be a quantum leap for many organizations, whereas it has the potential to greatly increase the quality of work and productivity of the organization. The only simple question is: how? And the study shows: this is easy to ask, but difficult to answer. Furthermore: is the learning and development professional actually the one to initiate, carry out, implement, and improve performance consulting or use it’s result as input for training and development? Congratulations Jacqueline Akkermans. Thanks Dr. Joachim Wetterling for serving as examiner of this thesis.
Taco de Bos successfully defended his Master thesis on December 17. The theme of his thesis is vision development in teams of vocational education to improve the practice of career guidance. In the thesis, an interesting mix of research methods was used, students, teachers, and study advisors were consulted, which resulted in a rich information set, based on which a vision on career guidance was developed. This established common ground is seen as an essential condition for the improvement of the quality of career guidance. Congratulations Taco! Thanks Dr. Joachim Wetterling for serving as coach in this thesis project.
Stan van Ginkel defended his dissertation today very well, and received his PhD with distinction (Cum Laude). A great achievement. Title of the dissertation: Fostering Oral Presentation Competence in Higher Education. Stan: congratulations, you earned this. Paranymphs Philippine Waisvisz and Nicolette Tauecchio, congratulations too.
Thanks Prof. dr. ir. Marcel Zwietering for chairing, and Professors Bedir Tekinerdogan, Luc De Grez, Diana Dolmans and Jan Vermunt for acting as opponents. Thanks professor Cees van der Vleuten and Sherwyn Morreale for your second opinion. Thanks Dr Harm Biemans and Dr Judith Gulikers for the daily supervision. Thanks Omid Noroozi (Education and Learning Sciences), Mila Roozen, Tom Bos (NCOI Online Academy), Richard van Tilborg and Melanie van Halteren (CoVince) for your contributions in the Virtual Reality study during the end of the project of Stan.
Congratulations Desiree Bartel with successfully defending your thesis, and your graduation as Master of Education. Thanks Dr. Martijn van Schaik for supervising this thesis project.
Congratulations Simone Piron with successfully defending your thesis, and your graduation as Master of Education. Thanks Dr. Joachim Wetterling for supervising this thesis project.
Congratulations Harry Veenhoven with successfully defending your thesis, and your graduation as Master of Education. Thanks Dr. Joachim Wetterling for supervising this thesis project.
Congratulations Christine Vis with successfully defending your thesis, and your graduation as Master of Education. Thanks Dr. Joachim Wetterling for supervising this thesis project.
Congratulations Marieke Derksen with successfully defending your thesis, and your graduation as Master of Education. Thanks Dr. Joachim Wetterling for supervising this thesis project.
I am happy to share that the ‘Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension; Competence for Communication and Rural Innovation’ (JAEE) got included in the Social Science Citation Index this week. The first (2018) Impact Factor is 1.388, which places it in the middle range of the journals listed in the category Education and Educational Research. Needless to say that this is the result of many years of hard and concentrated work, of the past and present editorial teams, publishers, reviewers, and above all, the authors. Thank you all very much for your efforts! I am stepping down as Editor-in-Chief at the end of the year, and wish Kristin Davis and Laurens Klerkx a lot of success with the further development of the journal. Establishing top quality agricultural education and extension throughout the globe will contribute to the quality of life.
