It turns out that many students are struggling to come back to campus after being online for two years. The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) hopes to help them out by facilitating study groups.
It turns out that many students are struggling to come back to campus after being online for two years. The Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) hopes to help them out by facilitating study groups.
The project is intended for bachelor students in their second year or higher. They’ll be put into groups of six to eight people under the supervision of a master student or third-year bachelor student, who have received special training. Together, the students will set personal goals and make dates to go to the library or to class together.
Helping hand
‘We want to provide a helping hand’, says FEB vice-dean Manda Broekhuis. ‘Because of the pandemic, many of these students had a rough start. They didn’t visit the faculty very often and hardly had any on-campus classes. We’ve also heard that some of them barely know any of their fellow students.’
They’re essentially missing the social cohesion that was a natural part of studying before the Covid pandemic. Students would attend classes together or visit the library with their fellow students. ‘What we want is to facilitate something that supports the students’ resolutions they had at the start of the year.’
Expectations
Third-year student Kacper Szpenja (21) has met up with his study group twice now. He thinks it will help him pass classes he failed previously. ‘If I look at my progress so far, everything I did with a group went well. I’ve been getting much better grades than when I was alone in my room.’
While he’ll have to take his exams on his own, it motivates him to know that he’s not just doing it for himself. ‘We all expect things from each other in the study group’, he says. ‘If I don’t show up to a session, I will disappoint not just myself, but other people as well. That helps me be even more disciplined.’
It’s too early to say whether the study groups will give him the boost he hopes for, but so far, Kacper is satisfied. ‘Who knows, maybe we’ll even make some new friends. The lockdowns were really hard on us in that sense, too. The study group might just be helpful in other ways, too.’