Tailor-made course (Geosciences Honours College)

• For Earth Sciences students: Dr Elisabeth Addink (E.A.Addink@uu.nl);
• For Human Geography and Spatial Planning students: Dr Sara Brouwer (s.f.brouwer@uu.nl); 
• For Science & Innovation Management and Global Sustainability Science students: Dr Heleen Mees and Dr Gerbrand Koren (honours.sd@uu.nl) 

A Tailor-made Course (TMC) is an honours profile course that offers the opportunity to include a wide range of honours activities that do not classify as one of the other honours profile courses (CC, UhRP or Descartes). It should contain an honours element that distinguishes it from a regular course and a link to the field of Geosciences and help to develop the student’s competences in relation to the requirements of the honours programme.

Examples of a Tailor-made Course are an external course at honours level, summer schools at honours level, or a mix of courses and additional assignments at honours level. The TMC may be an extra honours profile course. The student takes the initiative to formulate a proposal for a TMC, and must find a staff member willing to provide guidance and grading during the course.

Before proceeding with a TMC, the proposal must be signed by the staff member who will be supervising and grading the course, and then submitted to the student's honours coordinator, who will discuss the proposal with the Geosciences Honours Board for final approval. Considering that these procedures take time, the student is advised to start organising their tailor-made course well ahead of the start date. The course will not start until the Geosciences Honours Board has approved the proposal, which may take up to six weeks.

A TMC proposal should contain at least the following elements: 

1. Start with “Proposal for a tailor-made course within the Geosciences Honours College”;
2. Name and student number; 
3. Date;
4. Supervisor (staff member); 
5. Title for your course;
6. Requested EC (7,5); 
7. Intended learning outcomes; 
8. Relation of learning outcomes to honours programme requirements and personal learning goals; 
9. Short description of activities; 
10. End product(s); 
11.  How will the project be reported and assessed (in consultation with the supervisor)? Please include the assessment criteria that you have agreed upon with your supervisor to establish whether the project gets a pass or a fail.
12. Time planning. Please include a planning table that contains the main tasks/deliverables, how many hours are involved per task and in which period. This should clearly show that the project can be performed within two periods and is worth 7.5 EC (210 hours).

The grading of a tailor-made honours course is pass/fail.