Table 9:
Jury evaluation of the quality of the student proposals and their defense (N = 10)
| Jury ratings of the quality of the | ||
|---|---|---|
| proposal on a 5-point scale | M | SD |
| Novelty | 4.2 | 0.8 |
| Feasibility | 3.2 | 0.9 |
| Readability | 4.3 | 0.7 |
| NWO standarda | 3.4 | 0.7 |
| Defense | 4.6 | 0.5 |
| Jury comments: | ||
| The 10 jury members added their comments to their evaluation. A few typical jury comments are: | ||
| I was overall very impressed with the level of expertise the students had built-up in a matter of mere weeks. The topic of the research proposals is part of my research field, and I know first hand how difficult it can be to fully grasp the issues that captivate the field. The students actively pursued advice from world-leaders in the field (I, in fact, received various positive comments about this from foreign colleagues that were contacted by the students). Although, not surprisingly, feasibility would be an issue when submitting such proposals to a grant agency, the overall quality was good and the defense was impressive. | ||
| The report was of high scientific quality and very well readable (perfect English). It is difficult to judge if the final report meets the criteria for an NWO grant application, since the students cannot include preliminary experimental data of their own, which is essential for a proper grant application. However, the questions raised and experiments proposed are certainly up to the level of a grant application. During the defense each student showed the ambition to defend not only his/her own input, but the program as a whole. It appeared that all participating students had reached the required high quality level of this course. | ||
| It appears to me that a viable NWO proposal could have been extracted from virtually all proposals, but that some, perhaps the majority, “as is” lacked enough focus to present them as a proposal as such. | ||
| These students performed at an impressive level. The way they responded to jury questions and the way in which they defended their proposal was excellent, often using very good arguments! It is always difficult to qualify the level of understanding of students based on their presentations only, since they have ample time to prepare for the presentation of their proposal. However, one can qualify their level of understanding in a better way by focusing on how they respond to questions and how they behave in a scientific discussion, since they are not able to prepare for all possible questions they might have to answer. In this respect, their engagement, enthusiasm and level of understanding were impressive. The type of involvement they showed during their defense can only be reached after having read and thought a lot about a topic. That's what they apparently did! | ||
a NWO, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course of Dutch science by means of subsidies and research programs.