The Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science designed this pilot for Dutch universities to create a calmer academic year with more room for rest and activities outside of the classroom (such as research, designing education, internships, extracurricular activities). As part of the pilot, AUC introduced a new academic calendar in September 2024. This required changes to the programme of each of AUC's approximately 250 courses and the entire schedule.

Adjustments made for 2025-2026 based on pilot insights

As seen in the academic calendar, the many outcomes of monitoring have informed several changes for 2025-2026. The order of the proper break and reading week will be swapped in autumn 2025, to allow exams to be scheduled immediately after the reading week and thus promote a better spread of assessments in teaching weeks. In addition, the requirements of the wrap up week will change. Instead of not permitting assessment deadlines for the entire class, lecturers will be able to use the wrap up week to plan assessments that do not require students’ presence on campus (except for those students who must sit for a rescheduled exam). Finally, the communication to lecturers and students about the purpose of the class free weeks will be improved. 

Monitoring the impact on students and staff

AUC continuously monitors the impacts of the academic calendar changes through survey research and focus groups with students and staff. These activities ensure that opinions from the AUC community are collected and analysed, and make it possible to formulate adjustments for future academic years.

Focus group

An important part of the monitoring process has been the creation of a focus group. Composed of seven students and seven staff members, the group met twice throughout the year with the Director of Education to provide input on the effects of the new calendar on their studies or work.

Key insights:

• Instructions were not clear on how to use the reading week and wrap up week
• Class-free weeks felt like time off, allowing students to unwind
• Work pressure in remaining teaching weeks was extra high with fewer opportunities to spread out assessments

Surveys

In November and March, students and staff received a survey to rate the changes to the academic calendar as well as indicate how their courses and in-class experiences were impacted. Generally, students and staff indicated positive changes.

Key insights:

• Class-free weeks allowed for a break to relax, visit family or focus on course-related work without following classes at the same time
• Class-free weeks in autumn were not optimal
• It was difficult to plan assessments with fewer teaching weeks and new peaks in assessment load formed
• Support staff noted challenges in organising events in autumn

About the pilot "a smarter academic year"

Fourteen Dutch universities and 1 university of applied sciences are part of the pilot. As a participant at the national level, the UvA created three (sub)pilots for which programmes could sign up:

• Variations academic calendar;
• Automated assessment experiments;
• Design and implement a scan to identify challenges in organising, teaching and studying specific programmes.

AUC is part of (sub)pilot 1: variations academic calendar. This done together with the UvA’s BA Mathematics (FNWI) and BA Cultural Anthropology (FMG). Since the change in the academic calendar impacts all aspects of the college, AUC shares experiences with the other programmes in the pilot. Together, programmes can better monitor the pros and cons to the changes and use insights to adapt where necessary. 

Changes to AUC's academic calendar

AUC decided to adjust its 16-week teaching periods by adding extra class-free weeks. To make this possible without decreasing contact time between lecturers and students, AUC made each class 15 minutes longer. This allowed space for three non-teaching weeks in the 16-week periods. In Spring 2023, 71% of respondents to a survey on AUC’s scenario for a new academic calendar indicated that they highly supported the idea to lengthen class time and increase the number of class free weeks during 16-week periods.

Mitigating concerns

The changes to the academic calendar also sought to mitigate concerns expressed by some within the AUC community. Those concerns focused on the impact of AUC’s academic calendar change on workload within the 13 regular teaching weeks, on lecturers’ ability to keep course learning objectives unchanged, on the possibility of staging sufficient extracurricular events during the 16-week teaching period and on students’ learning.

Some worried that students might find it more difficult to concentrate during longer class days and that their engagement would suffer because of the multiple class free weeks. To counteract negative impacts of the changes, adjustments were made to assessment rules and to the purpose of the class-free weeks. Furthermore, experts from the VU's Centre for Teaching and Learning hosted a workshop for lecturers to support course redesign.

Steering group at AUC

AUC has a Steering Group for the academic calendar pilot. The group is composed of members of the representative advisory bodies (Board of Studies, Student Council and Works Council), and one of the Heads of Studies. It is chaired by the Director of Education. The Steering Group meets approximately 3-4 times each year and discusses the monitoring efforts and suggests changes to the pilot based on the outcomes of these actions.

Do you have questions or want to share your opinion? 

Visit the Director of Education's Open Hour on 12 June from 11:15 to 12:15 in Room 2.21!