What did Liesbeth Baartman love at CRADLE?…Coffee, food and collaboration!
16 June 2025
We were delighted to host Dr Liesbeth Baartman, professor of Vocational Education at University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, for her academic visit with CRADLE. Liesbeth kicked off our CRADLE Seminar Series for 2025 and engaged in a rigorous program of work with Deakin researchers. This collaboration will continue into the future. Here Liesbeth reflects on her time at Deakin and the experiences she will take home to the Netherlands.
I met Professor David Boud and several other CRADLE researchers at EARLI conferences throughout Europe and at the Assessment in Higher Education Conference in Manchester. At these conferences we discussed programmatic assessment – an important focus of my work – and how it relates to the CRADLE topics, such as feedback literacy development, feedback dialogues, assessment of workplace learning and evaluative judgement.
With the publication of the TEQSA report on genAI in Australia and the call for higher education courses to adjust their assessment programs, it was time for a research visit to CRADLE to further explore common interests and collaborations. Many thanks to David Boud and Helen Partridge of Deakin Learning Futures (DLF) for inviting me!
I had the honour to give one of the seminars of the CRADLE Seminar Series 2025, in which I shared experiences of research in programmatic assessment in various professional domains and courses in the Netherlands. I also worked with DLF, alongside Pro Vice-Chancellor Teaching and Learning Helen Partridge and Director of DLF Darci Taylor.
What a wonderful collaboration, and what inspiring conversations we had with Deakin faculty leaders and the DLF team. I am looking back on inspiring sessions, exploring opportunities for course wide assessment and feedback, and integrating genAI in responsible ways in education and assessment.
With the CRADLE researchers I had inspiring discussions and started work on a number of papers. Together with Juuso Nieminen, on how programmatic assessment does (not) afford student agency and professional identity development. With Jack Walton, on assessment standards and criteria and the illusion of putting things on paper to make them transparent to students. With David Boud, on the question whether programmatic assessment, originating in health sciences education, can be translated to other professional domains and which ‘compromises’ need to be made. With Joanna Tai, on equity and diversity in assessment. And with Margaret Bearman, on judgements in workplace learning and clinical environments, and assessment as a social practice.
Beyond the scientific discussion and sessions for DLF, I loved the work climate at Deakin and Australia in general. To start with, the coffee. Good quality coffee is appreciated in Melbourne and CRADLE colleagues knew the best places to buy one.
Home again at my own universities in Utrecht and Maastricht, I automatically took the coffee from the machine again. I suddenly realized I only added sugar to my coffee – which I never did in Australia – to make it taste like … well ‘anything’. I promised myself to never drink that awful stuff again and stick with tea or get a proper coffee.
Another habit that was more difficult to take home are the lovely lunches we had, sitting together and discussing about work or other topics, and mostly enjoying a warm lunch taken from home. Something different from a ‘Dutch cheese sandwich’ that we eat sitting behind our laptop. I will keep trying to change this habit, but – as we know from assessment research – cultures are hard to change.
I am grateful to professors David Boud and Phil Dawson for inviting me to CRADLE. The rigorous and deep conversations about conceptual issues with regard to (programmatic) assessment challenged and expanded my thinking. I will also take home the ways of working, having team discussions to really deeply grasp an important issue, think it through as a team, and share it with the scientific community. Looking forward to further collaborations!
Watch Liesbeth’s seminar
Read a review of Liesbeth’s seminar
About Liesbeth Baartman
Dr Liesbeth Baartman works as a professor at HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, where she co-chairs the research group Vocational Education. She also works part-time as an associate professor at the School of Health Professions Education at Maastricht University.
She combines research, teaching, and teacher professionalisation tasks. Liesbeth specialises in integrating assessment in vocational and professional education with curriculum design and student learning. She is the co-founder of several Dutch networks on assessment. This includes the professional learning community on programmatic assessment. About 25 programmes from different professional domains participate in this community.
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