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38 Educational Programs

On Expedition

For years now, FASoS students have been participating in the On Expedition course. e general aim is to guide students in the selection, analysis, and review of historical travel books from the Jesuit Library for their bachelor’s thesis. In the first part of this five-month MaRBLe course, students have the opportunity to experience and strengthen their interdisciplinary scholarly research skills through examining literary sources that contain information about trade missions and scientific expeditions and analyzing these sources in terms of identity and concepts such as othering, a concept linked to the work of modern theorist Edward Said (Said, 1978). This course consists of lectures, collection tours, presentations, group discussions, skills workshops, and feedback sessions. In 2020, an additional activity was introduced, which consisted of the creation of a vlog series in which one of the students (Hvalić, 2020) shared her thoughts, accomplishments, struggles, and aw-moments throughout the course.

Knowledge valorization or societal outreach is an important aspect of the MaRBLe program. Students present their research results not only to their fellow researchers but also to interested parties outside of the university. They share academic knowledge with nonacademic stakeholders. In the second part of this course, students are given an assignment to disseminate their research results to a wider audience by writing and publishing an article on Wikipedia. Although most students are familiar with Wikipedia, none or only few have experience with creating or editing its content. Therefore, students learn how to write articles for Wikipedia during three instruction classes with a volunteer at Wikimedia Nederland. In the first class meeting, students are introduced to the scope and writing guidelines of the platform; then students start writing their article in a personal Wikipedia sandbox (i.e., a space to experiment with the process of editing Wikipedia). During the second class meeting, students receive feedback on the first draft of their article, which they have to incorporate for the final class meeting. In between the instruction classes, students also receive