Creating an infrastructure for Object Based Teaching and Learning at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

How can we deepen learning experiences, acquire skills and tackle complex subjects by engaging with objects? This is a question we ask ourselves at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. At the university library, we have five unique heritage collections that can be used in teaching. In practice, these collections are not used for teaching very often. When they are used, it's by a limited number of disciplines. In this talk, Anouk Nuijten and Linde Voorend explain how they encourage the use of their special collections in teaching through their object-based teaching and learning initiative. They present the infrastructure created for teachers, the tools developed for curators and some applications of OBTL in higher education.

Anouk Nuijten is subject librarian for Humanities for the University Library of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds a PhD in Celtic Studies from Cambridge University and specialized in manuscript and early print book culture. She takes care of the collections for the Faculty of Humanities and teaches workshops on information literacy and how to find sources. She is also project leader for the library, having recently completed project Re:Book, an initiative that rethinks the way we interact with our physical collections. Anouk is part of the Object Based Teaching and Learning initiative team within the library.

Linde Voorend is a project leader in the educational support department for the University Library of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU). She has a background in Cultural Anthropology and is specialized in visual ethnography, sexuality and the body. At the VU, she supports lecturers in using innovative resources in their education, such as 3D printed objects and Virtual Reality environments. She is also the project lead on the topic of open education and open educational resources. Linde is part of the Object Based Teaching and Learning initiative team within the library.