Teaching crisis management at the University of Nijmegen according to the ‘Harvard’ method:
1. Story: Learning lessons from a real story – a true crisis (case study), with highs and lows and many nuances. This time we covered several crisis stories, including the refugee shelter and MH17.
2. Questions: Ask students questions directly and continuously. How do they see it, what can they learn from it? How would they do it? What do I mean by this? And make sure you involve everyone! Is anyone quiet? Ask him a question. I start every lesson straight away with questions… let them talk.
3. The bar is high: we only leave the classroom when we have actually learned something. There must be at least 5 lessons on the board that matter. And which the students can still remember a year later.
4. Current affairs: I have traditionally been a sociologist and ‘journalist’, so nothing is as fascinating as involving today’s newspaper. Make it relevant, pull it into the now. Challenge us to think about what kind of society we live in. And how students can also make a difference, today and tomorrow, by reasoning actively and sharply.
