Professional Development

Course manual 2025/2026

Course content

In the forensic science programme  you will learn everything you need to become a full-fledged forensic scientist. While the majority of the programme focuses on the science, this course has a different orientation: your personal development. Against this backdrop, it aspires to complement your scientific training by providing additional tools that are highly valuable for your future work in forensic practice.

The three foundations of the course are the following:

• Becoming a reflective practitioner: the course first aims for you to become a reflective practitioner. We will train your the ability to reflect on your actions so as to engage in a process of continuous learning. Gaining experience(s) is crucial to develop yourself, but in order to really grow, deliberate reflection is needed. This course will help you in reflecting on yourself – and forensic science – and hopefully will inspire you to do so in the future.
• Strengthening your Interdisciplinary identity: both this programme and the work of the forensic scientist are fundamentally interdisciplinary in nature. Problems are most often complex and being able to tackle a problem from different angles is highly valued for 21st century professionals. This course will strengthen your interdisciplinary identity and moreover help you to better understand – and engage – with different sorts of stakeholders you will encounter in forensic practice.
• Strengthening important skills and competences: last, this course aims to foster growth in terms of valuable skills and competences, that add on to your scientific training. Think for instance of interview and presentation skills, giving and receiving feedback, handling stress and teamwork

Students have to attend 15 Professional Development workshops and forensic colloquia.

For the forensic colloquia, students have to attend 3 Frontiers of Forensic Science lecture afternoons organized by the MSc Forensic Science and the Co van Ledden Hulsebosch Center, 1 Literature Thesis mini-symposium, and 5 Research Project presentations held by other forensic science students defending their Research Project. By following colloquia students can choose presentations to broaden or deepen forensic knowledge and can orientate for topics and criteria for the literature thesis and the final research project. Dates and times for those presentations will be announced via Canvas and/or by e-mail. In order to monitor your attendance of the colloquia we make use of a Digital Colloquia card.

Study materials

Practical training material

• all materials will be provided in the workshops

Objectives

• 1. present themself as a forensic professional with a specific expertise (depending on previous degrees) in a variety of contexts using appropriate jargon and communication styles (professional identity).
• 2. present a forensic theme/question/issue in a understandable, structured and transparent way relevant to a particular audience using attractive and adequate presentation materials (professional communication).
• 3. exchange constructive feedback between peers, teachers and professionals (team work).
• 4. reflect upon and evaluate own contributions, as well as from others, to project teams (team work).
• 5. monitor and control one’s own professional development, formulate short-term and long-term learning goals, choose appropriate learning activities and standards for achieving those goals (lifelong learning skills).
• 6. distinguish personal fields of interest from an overview of state-of-the-art research in forensic science (lifelong learning skills).
• 7. improve communication and improvisational skills before professional and lay audiences (professional communication).

Teaching methods

• Workshop
• Seminar
• Presentation/symposium
• Supervision/feedback meeting

Learning activities

Attendance

This programme does not have requirements concerning attendance (OER part B).

Additional requirements for this course:

• Students should participate in all workshops offered.

The requirements for admissions to  all workshops and other activities are as follows:

• All preperatory or reflective assigments (as communicated on Canvas) need to be sumitted on time.  Failure to do so means that the student is not admitted to the activity.
• If a student is unable to attend or prepare properly for, evaluate, or attend a workhop (e.g. due to illness), the student should communicate this  via Canvas Mail to the teachers. An alternative activitity for the missed workshop may be arranged only if the absence is timely communcated.

Assessment

Assessment and testing

All components will be graded with a pass or no pass. Components:

1. attendance of professional development workshops
2. individual assignment 
3. attendance of colloquia

Students receive 2 EC when attendance criteria for workshops are met, the individual assignment is graded ‘PASS’ and if the attendance criteria regarding colloquia are met.

Table of specification: the relation between the Learning Outcomes (LO) of the course, the assessment components of the course and the Exit Qualifications (EQ) of the Master’s Forensic Science (described in the Introduction in the Course Catalogue)

Assignments

for more information see: https://canvas.uva.nl/courses/10181/modules

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

Additional information

• Dates, times and room numbers can be found in DataNose. Learning materials, assignments and workshop instructions can be found on Canvas.
• Key papers, books, video’s or other learning materials may be used in the workshops. In that case, they will be made available through Canvas or handed out during the meetings.

Last year's student feedback

In order to provide students some insight how we use the feedback of student evaluations to enhance the quality of education, we decided to include the table below in all course guides.

Contact information

Coordinator

• dr. Maarten Blom