Impact education
Connecting education and practice
Each of the three faculties on campus offers students the opportunity to apply their knowledge to real-life cases in various Bachelor’s and Master’s courses. Collaborative courses can use cases and projects given by partner organisations. It is an opportunity for students to learn how to engage with a wide diversity of stakeholders and to manage a real-life project, while companies benefit from our students' advice and insights, and may even meet their next recruit.
The Roeterseiland campus is very much connected to society, its realities and contemporary issues. Collaborative challenges and programmes are an additional opportunity to stimulate the creation of innovative and impactful projects and solutions.
Finding impactful solutions together
Campus-wide challenges
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The Master Challenge platform connects companies, professors and students around real-life challenges. Companies propose a challenge for students to work on during a course. Students and professors can choose a challenge that fits their specialities and ambition.
One of those challenges was the Summer Sustainability Challenge, a 3-week voluntary program organized in July 2022. This challenge connected students from the Roeterseiland Campus to companies needing insights and consulting on sustainability-related questions.
Using data provided by the company and their research, students develop skills such as organization, project management, teamwork, communication, and more, to deliver insights to the company.
Meanwhile, the organization that has isolated a problem related to its activity benefits from the input of involved and creative students, who, because they are sometimes outsiders and novices in the company's topic, find very innovative solutions based on their own experiences and education.
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The Design Thinking Pressure Cooker is an intensive transdisciplinary educational exercise that links science and society. It offers students a learning experience by providing them with a real challenge from an external client. Students work on the challenge by analyzing the problem, designing a solution, and testing the prototype. During 3 very intense days, groups of students work together to find solutions for the external client. This pedagogical format has been successfully implemented in several courses at the UvA, both at Bachelor and Master levels, in fields such as psychology, communication and political science.
In 2022, Teachers and students of UvA who participated in the course ‘Pressure Cooker Communication Science’ collaborated with the Municipality of Amsterdam Chief Technology Office (CTO).
Social and Behavioural Sciences
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Computational Social Science connect social sciences, humanities and information science. This innovative Bachelor programme includes theory, research methodology, statistics, programming (in Python), and change-making skills, for students to specialise in sustainable digital interventions for complex societal challenges. The courses include many group projects tackling real problems in consultation with clients and societal stakeholders.
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During the Placemaking course, student teams work with clients on social issues related to a particular location in Amsterdam. The aim is to find sustainable solutions to the social challenges of the space, involving the local community and stakeholders to ensure that everyone gets the most out of an improvement to the area. The student teams use transdisciplinary methods to consider the interrelationships between users, stakeholders, initiatives and businesses, laws and regulations to provide a sustainable solution to the problem. Local, social, psychological, economic, political and geographical characteristics are part of the analysis and serve as a basis for students' reflections.
This elective course is spread over three locations at the UvA (Science Park, Roeterseiland Campus and Universiteitskwartier).
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The Pressure Cooker Communication Science is an intensive programme during which student teams work on providing innovative solutions to a societal problem for an external client. The course begins with training and preparatory meetings to prepare a two-day intense workshop during which the acquired knowledge is applied to a real-life case.
Students are in contact with an actual client and are trained by coaches.
Economics and Business
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The Minor Entrepreneurship is a full-time 30 ECTS programme completed in 1 semester, open to all Bachelor students from the UvA (all faculties) offered by The Faculty of Economics and Business. Three courses make up the minor: Cases in entrepreneurship (6 ECTS), Startup Psychology (6 ECTS), and Entrepreneurship in Practice (18 ECTS).
The Entrepreneurship in Practice course is the core course of the minor and lasts 3 blocks. This course is similar to an accelerator programme: student entrepreneurs benefit from industry expert guest lectures, weekly tailored coaching sessions, and mentoring from seasoned entrepreneurs. They also can participate in various pitching and networking events during the semester.
Since its creation in 2007, the Minor Entrepreneurship has brought to life hundreds of startups, many of which have become profitable businesses. During the intensive 5-month programme, students develop a product or service and prepare it to enter the market. Around 20-25 startups are created each year, most of which are registered with the KvK, reaching several hundred customers and generating cumulative sales of over €15,000.
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During this course, student teams work together to solve a real-life entrepreneurial challenge given by an existing venture. Students use academic theories to support innovative, high-quality recommendations. The entire project is done in close collaboration and consultation with experts, stakeholders, and the venture itself.
The Venture Challenge course is part of the Master Entrepreneurship, a 1-year programme jointly coordinated by the UvA and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). The Master’s Entrepreneurship combines innovative knowledge with practical education. Students get to work on real-life cases, do an internship, and work on their business ideas. Guest lectures are organized, connecting students with speakers from start-ups/scale-ups and corporates. This programme is an opportunity to benefit from the expertise and network of the two best universities in Amsterdam.
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Operating at the Amsterdam Business School and the Amsterdam School of Economics, the Amsterdam Living Case Lab (ALCL) connects courses at the Roeterseiland campus with real cases from external actors.
Students get to work in teams on a real-life case or a complex challenge facing an organisation. At the same time, the organisations benefit from the students' innovative ideas. These collaborations create professional relationships between innovative companies and potential future recruits or interns.
The Living Case Lab challenges last 8 to 16 weeks and are an integral part of a relevant course in one of the university's programmes.
Law
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During this course, students get practical experience by working in teams supervised by staff on real cases and legal research for their clients. The Amsterdam Law Clinics is available for Masters students from all Amsterdam Law School Master tracks.
There are 8 Clinical programmes (Clinics): The Amsterdam European Law Clinic, The Amsterdam International Law Clinic, The Business and Human Rights Clinic, The Fair Trials Clinic, The Fair Work and Equality Law Clinic, Criminal Justice Clinic, Recht & Beleid Clinic, Environmental Justice Clinic.
This course is part of the Amsterdam Law Practice (ALP), the Law School's experiential learning programme.
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The Amsterdam Law Hub, located in the heart of the Roeterseiland campus, includes a Startup Incubator. Several challenges have been organized since the creation of the Law Hub in 2019, allowing students, researchers, and lawyers to pitch their ideas and receive financing and support.
During the start-up challenge, "The Little Law Student", an innovative study guide designed to make studying law more accessible and visual, imagined by 23-year-old law student Claudia Ghannam, won a €500 boost.
Other challenges included the Justice Challenge. The winning projects included an app allowing asylum seekers more justice during immigration and naturalization processes and a service that provides refugees with all-in support when setting up a business.
Would you like to know more about collaborating or organising a challenge?
To organise a challenge based on your organisation’s case, to include a challenge to your course, or to participate in a challenge, you can contact the Living Case Lab, visit the Master Challenge platform, or contact us. To collaborate during a course, contact the course coordinator or contact us.