Online Teaching Widened Pool of Guest Lecturers from Around World

Students at Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences can look forward to an excellent line-up of guest lectures in the coming academic year. After almost two years of COVID-19 restrictions, classes at universities and universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands are expected to return to normal from 30 August with lecturers teaching in person. 

According to Fjorentina Muco, Wittenborg's Guest Lecturing Coordinator, there will be at least 5 guest lectures from various disciplines in the first study block. Since the pandemic reached the Netherlands in March 2020, there has been online and hybrid teaching with most of the guest lectures delivered online.  

“With online teaching, lecturers were concerned that some of the impact would be lost on students. On the upside, thanks to online teaching, we were able to recruit inspiring guest lecturers from many different countries, like Spain and Italy, who might otherwise not have been able to travel to the Netherlands to speak to students face-to-face. So online teaching opened that door for us.”

Wittenborg regularly invites guest lecturers from different fields and industries to talk to students – usually an individual who possesses advanced knowledge of a particular subject area. Sometimes a guest lecturer can also be a faculty member who is invited to speak to a class he/she does not normally teach or someone from management. Wittenborg CEO Maggie Feng, for instance, has on occasion spoken to students to share some of her experiences.

In the first block, students can look forward to speakers Jerry Stam (associate partner of IBM Global Business Services),  Adrian Borggreve (senior lecturer at Saxion University of Applied Sciences), Andries Grul (export manager at Royal Talens), Yawar Abbas (researcher at Stigting IMEC Nederland) and marketing expert Aradhana Kumari.  

WUP 24/8/2021
by Anesca Smith
©WUAS Press