If you could take any course at the UvA, what would you take? Every year, the IIS asks this question, and every year one student’s idea is chosen. The theme “Future Change” provided vast inspiration for the five finalists, as well as the editors at Inter. But only one course could win. We spoke with Annika Iselhorst, the winner of the 2023 Create a Course Challenge about her experience. 

Image from IIS (Create a Course Challenge 2023 Won by “Decoding Our Future”, 2023)

Iselhorst told us “I am interested in education and education development and so on. So I thought that was a nice way of trying it out. And then this year I was like, okay, I have an idea now. Let’s participate, and then also the theme happened to directly play into my ideas”. 

At first glance, Annika said, “What I first thought of was technologies, but I also thought that it’s in a way very relevant to our generation because technologies have a lot of things to do with climate change and social change”. 

Despite being relevant, Annika had not been exposed to this topic in the first year and a half of her Political Science bachelor’s, “There is an elective in the third year that is kind of in that direction, but otherwise not really” and instead was introduced through a summer course she took, “ But I did like a summer school on a similar topic, and that was where I got more introduced to it and where I became very interested in it”.

Having the motivation and interest, Iselhorst was ready to draft her idea. “My basic idea back then and still now is to broaden the technologies that are being covered in academia, because right now it’s a lot about AI and data. And I mean, that’s also going to be in the course, because it is very interesting and very relevant, right?”. However, Iselhorst knew she wanted to include more, “But at that point, I also started to be like, okay, but I also want to include nanorobotics or whatever, which is like things you don’t really have otherwise”. 

After her main idea was formed, Annika had to develop it. This included finding teaching materials, lecturers, and how students would be assessed. Despite this overwhelming task, Annika was not too stressed, “I think summer school was a big help because I had to use some materials there”. The last round also helped because “I also had to do my own research on the topic then so I had some materials already that I thought would be good and would be fitting. And then I just kind of went on from there and looked, okay, what else did these people write? Where were they referenced and which keywords are relevant? And I used that”. 

However some aspects were difficult for Iselhorst, “I didn’t really know what six ECTs were. What is the teaching? What is the examination there? I take six ECT courses, but I don’t know”. Thankfully the IIS offered guided mentoring sessions, “I did one of those where I asked him, okay, what do you want me to say here? And then I kind of decided that because I want to bridge between disciplines and I want to encourage students to actually learn and research themselves instead of just getting the information from a lecturer. So then I decided to propose a lot of tutorials and seminars instead of a lecture-based course” 

Now with her finalised idea, round three started, where UvA students and staff voted on their favourite nominations. Annika noted she found “All Eyes on Us: Cyberfeminism and Digital Surveillance” by Anna Vrtiak & Lisa van Oosten very interesting, “they had more of a feminist and a bit more like a social philosophical aspect, which I guess I have because you have discussions”. 

In the final round, Annika pitched her idea to a board made up of teachers at the IIS. To stand out, Iselhorst emphasised her structure, “I decided to always mention different examples. Every time I would give an example so that people would see the range…I talked a lot about the course structure like the seminar-based and inviting industry experts and bridging between different disciplines. And I try to really emphasise how that makes the course unique and why I think that’s necessary”. 

Annika is now working with the IIS to create her final course, which should be available for UvA students to take in 2025. If you decide to take “Decoding our Future”, Iselhort said the takeaway she would want students to have is “I would say maybe that’s like technologies, like whatever it is, [they] are relevant to all of us, no matter your background…you don’t have to learn about the technical specifications to be able to assess for yourself how you want them to impact our future”