FAQ Studying @ Wittenborg

Please be informed that the deadline to upload Chapter 1-4 is Monday, Week 7 of the previous block. For master’s students this deadline is Monday, Week 5 of the previous block. Students can find all the information on deadlines in Part 8 of the EEG.

Please see the flow chart below which will give you a complete understanding of the timings and process.

Bachelor's students: upload your Research Proposal to the respective pathway of GA32 in the module online area. E.g. GA32_RP_IBA Research Proposal |GA32_RP_IBA|.

Master's students: upload your Research Proposal Topic in Semester 1 and Research Proposal in Semester 2 in the GA41 Research Methods assessment area.

Chapter 1-3, Chapter 1-4 and final version Graduation Assignment/Final Project: on the Graduation Assignment online area in the block you plan to graduate (check out the deadlines in the submission areas).

Students can find it challenging to find a printing shop in their city due to many of them having closed their businesses recently. In case of being unable to find a printing shop the students may also opt for printing and binding the GAs from online printing websites e.g. https://www.printenbind.nl/. For any further information (e.g. cost, duration, delivery, data/research confidentiality, etc.), please contact the company directly. 

Note: Using the above website is your own responsibility and Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences does not take any responsibility nor has any affiliation with it whatsoever. 

Yes, you may use any equipment or request for special arrangements. However, please arrange this either through your Academic Supervisor or Process Tutor or the Education Department at least one week in advance of the time of the Oral Defence.

Students are required to print and submit 2 properly bound hardcopies of their GA/FP to Wittenborg's Front Desk. Please check the EEG Part 8 'GRADUATION ASSIGNMENT & FINAL PROJECT HANDBOOK’ and the Module Online Area for instructions on printing and submission requirements.

From the academic year 2022-2023, you have to submit the clearance form before submitting your final GA/FP. Please follow the instructions given in the online area of when and how to submit the form. 

Please check this link GA/FP Clearance Form (office.com). Note that the clearance form gives an indication of the below eligibilities: 

• A student has completed all the required exams except the GA/FP and has achieved 220 European Credits for Bachelors, and 65 European Credits for Masters.
• All liabilities like library books and any other borrowed materials are returned by the student. 
• There are no financial dues to Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences by the student. 

Please refer to the EEG Part 8 for more information.

In order to graduate, students have to complete all European Credit (EC) modules. Once all ECs are achieved and you have passed the GA Oral Defence, you will be invited to the graduation ceremony by the Events Coordinator, via email.

In the email, you will find all information and instructions pertaining to the ceremony. Please follow all instructions given in the email. Among others, you will be required to:

1) Provide information on your guest list (the number of guests who will be attending the ceremony)

2) Complete the graduation questionnaire

3) Submit a photograph of yourself. This photograph will be shown on the screen during the ceremony.

As all educational activities are now conducted as on-campus activities, we would like to highlight that students must be physically present on campus to defend the Graduation Assignment and Final Project (GA/FP) in addition to the presentations of In-company training and Work Placement modules.

Wittenborg is an experiential institute. At Wittenborg, students sign up for a degree programme with lessons, projects and other educational activities delivered on-campus on a full-time basis. Therefore, all students are expected to be physically present and effectively participate in the classes in order to fulfil all study requirements.

If you have to travel outside the Netherlands for any extended period for mitigating reasons (e.g. medical), please note that you must inform your Process Tutor, Academic Supervisor & the examination department (examresults@wittenborg.eu) at least one block in advance of your Graduation Assignment and Final Project modules.

When a paper is submitted via Turnitin, an overall percentage of similarity or originality score (with colour code) is shown (see picture below). The similarity score is just a percentage of text in the student’s paper that matches sources in the Turnitin database. Turnitin does not detect nor check for plagiarism but it highlights the text in the student’s paper that is similar to or matches against another source. The picture below shows a Turnitin Originality Report in the Document Viewer window. On the right of the image, you will see a numbered list of matched sources. Each of these is allocated a colour and number and these correspond to the number and colour in the student’s text. A high percentage does not mean there is plagiarism and a low match score does not mean there is no plagiarism. However, a large percentage could indicate that the student has used too much from one source, or a direct copying of text from that source – see the red highlighted text numbered 1. A high percentage could also mean poor paraphrasing by student – see the pink highlighted text numbered 2. Both these high percentages are grounds for further investigation by the teacher on the student’s paper as direct copying and insufficient paraphrasing, even with proper referencing are considered as plagiarism. 

At Wittenborg, up to 20% similarity is acceptable for all submissions through Turnitin as long as the submission is properly referenced as per Harvard referencing style. Above 20% but no more than 30% similarity must be motivated/justified by the student to be accepted for assessment. The 20% similarity does not automatically imply the submission is plagiarism-free as there could also be cases of plagiarism with less than 20% similarity. The submission must be properly referenced as per Harvard referencing style.

Source: www.wittenborg-online.com

On condition that a student has a mitigating circumstance and/or a minimum of 210ECs (Bachelors) and 50ECs (Masters), a request can be made for a Retake of the Remaining Module if the remaining module is not within the block(s) prior to Graduation. A maximum of 2 modules can be requested. A student is permitted to do a Retake of the Remaining Module only once. Otherwise reverts to the normal planning of the module. A Retake of the Remaining Module can only be done when a student has attempted the normal exam (1st attempt). In special cases (at the request of the student in writing), the exam board may decide otherwise.

Retake of the Remaining Module requests must be made not later than Lesson Week 1 of the block before the planned Retake, i.e. For a retake request in Block 2: the request has to be made in Lesson Week 1 of Block 1.

Please follow the instructions and fill in the Retake of Remaining Module Request Form on time.

Resource: EEG Part 8, 9.2 Retake of Remaining Module under Mitigating Circumstances. 

Please note that we have activated Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on all Wittenborg accounts. You have to login via text on your phone or Authenticator app. Please refer to the attached document on how to activate your MFA. 

There are other possible reasons why you cannot access your account, besides the MFA activation. The 3 most common reasons are as follows:

• Entering the wrong password: A password may have been changed recently or the student may have simply entered the wrong password. Passwords are case sensitive.
• Inactivity for a long period of time: If a student does not access his/her student account for a few months, the account will be blocked. The account has to be re-setted. Please contact Wittenborg Helpdesk to help reset the account. Helpdesk or Front Desk will send to the student’s alternative email information to have the account reset.
• Outstanding invoice tuition fee: If a student has not yet paid the tuition fees, the student’s account will be blocked. The account will be reactivated once the outstanding tuition fees have been paid.

Sometimes there are technical issues with your account. Please contact ict@wittenborg.eu or Helpdesk to assist you further. 

If any question remains, students can contact the front desk for support. This can be done either via an email to frontdesk@wittenborg.eu or by phone: (088) 6672688.

Source: A Password is not enough...we are starting to implement multi-factor authentication (sharepoint.com)

The deadlines to upload assignments are clearly shown in the Module Guide, the Online Module course area and in the Turnitin submission page. The upload area is visible to everyone who is enrolled at the online module area of the course. Please take note that the responsibility of checking the assignment submission deadline lies on the student. So always check the Module Online Area.

You also need to consider the difference in the time zone that you are located in (for those who are not physically present in the Netherlands). Rules and regulations regarding deadlines to upload assignments at Turnitin are clearly indicated in the EEG guide of Wittenborg (Part 5 - General Assessment Policy).

Should you face any technical issues, you need to contact Helpdesk at least 30 minutes before the deadline with the assignment and screenshot(s) of the exact technical issue. Requests put after the deadline will not be attended to.

If you miss the deadline to upload an assignment on Turnitin, you will have to wait for the next retake opportunity.

Note:

You are highly advised not to upload your assignment in the last minute.

Source: EEG Part 5 - General Assessment Policy

If you wish to speak to any of the Wittenborg staff, please invite them for an appointment using the Outlook Calendar. You can find the email addresses of all staff in your Outlook address book.

If you want to make an appointment with your process tutor, you need to fill in the form provided to you in your process tutor area.

In the attached document you will find a detailed guide.

Please note that the meetings with your process tutor are only online and will be held on MS Teams. 

Source: Course: Student Resources - General Information for all Students |STU001| (wittenborg-online.com)

No lessons are facilitated online from academic year 2022-2023. 

Wittenborg is an experiential institute, thus, students need to physically interact with each other. The teachers will conduct all lessons in the classrooms and the study materials will be available for students via the online course areas on Wittenborg-Online, as usual. Note that no lessons will be streamed live.

At Wittenborg, students signed up for a programme that is planned and offered with lessons, projects, and other educational activities delivered in-campus on full-time basis. Therefore, all students are expected to effectively participate in the classes and fulfil all study requirements.

If you have travelled outside the Netherlands for mitigating reasons (e.g medical) please note that you are eligible to request for Leave of absence/study freeze. You can find more information on this in the FAQs. https://www.wittenborg-online.com/mod/glossary/showentry.php?eid=848

You can communicate with Wittenborg teachers and staff via Email, Teams or Phone. Teachers usually provide their email addresses to students during the first lesson, so do take down their email addresses when given. Additionally, you can find email addresses of Wittenborg staff in your Outlook address book. You can also find the teachers/staff by typing their names in Teams and you can directly communicate with them.

If you are unsure, you can always contact front desk for help at frontdesk@wittenborg.eu.

All students are required to use their Wittenborg student email with S#@student.wittenborg.eu for any official communication. 

Note:

In relation to the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) it is essential that students only send university-related material and emails through the official student email account (@student.wittenborg.eu).

Source: The EEG Part 4 - Practical Information Guide

We have partnered with Perlego, EBSCO, Willey, Vital Source, and other publishers to ensure over 1,000,000 different titles of books and over 2,000,000 journal articles are available for our students and teachers. Students and staff can access these resources via the "Online Library Resources" on Wittenborg-Online. A special search function is created in this page to search all journal articles in our database (see Figure 1 below).

Moreover, together with our partner, EBSCO we have developed a special widget on EBSCO search engine which will also assist you to find articles on open source publishers such as Google Scholar  (see Figure 2 below).. We highly recommend students to use these resources before browsing through other external sources for the same articles or books.  

Figure 1

Figure 2

An email receipt is sent to your S#@student.wittenborg.eu account each time the assignment has been submitted on Turnitin.  

Please see below the flowchart for the procedure of GAs/Final Projects.

Source: www.wittenborg-online.com