Speakers

Title of Keynote: Reflection re-engineered. Creating the conditions for Reflection, instead of asking students to reflect.

Bio

Pleun Hermsen is a versatile education professional at TU Delft. Originally, she started her career as a trauma surgeon, but her love for education led her to a change of direction. She developed extensive experience in teaching, instructional design as well as educational management in (medical-)technical education.

Her non-traditional profile within engineering education has inspired her to focus on reflection for engineers as a catalyst for learning deeper, more broadly, and more comprehensive. Her view is to merge disciplinary education with broader development of the students and staff. To materialize those intentions, Pleun founded and spearheaded a TU Delft wide program, the Reflective Engineer. There, her team co-created many educational innovations with teachers and students.

Reflective Engineer interventions are guided on the principle that reflection is easier said than done. Instead of asking people to reflect we should create the conditions where reflection can emerge. Reflection helps engineers to unravel their own perspective, understand, and appreciate other peoples’ perspective for students to become better equipped at dealing with complexity and can become responsible engineers in today’s socio-technological society.

Goals of these interventions are diverse, ranging from giving and receiving feedback, to study success, ethics, collaboration, etc. One of these interventions is an open-source board game called Campfire Talk that facilitates unsupervised peer-to-peer coaching.

The work in the Reflective Engineer program has resulted in an evidence-informed and practice-based framework that supports educational professionals in creating the conditions for meaningful reflection in their own practice.

Pleuns work is supported by two Educational Grants from the prestigious Comenius network.