Marta Andhov  0:00  

Welcome to Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. Today, we’re talking about the Irado case, calculating the activities criterion and creating a classroom community.

Bestek Voice  0:17  

Welcome to Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Willem Janssen and Dr. Marta Andhov discuss public procurement law issues, their love of food, and academic life. In each episode, Willem, Marta and their guests search for answers to intriguing public procurement questions. This is Bestek. Let’s dish up public procurement law.

Marta Andhov  0:42  

Hello, Willem.

Willem Janssen  0:43  

Hey Marta, good to see you, good to speak to you again.

Marta Andhov  0:47  

Likewise. Today, we have an interesting set of topics to cover. On our main, we will be talking about a pending Dutch case in the European Court of Justice.

Willem Janssen  1:02  

Yeah, we just have a conclusion by the Advocate General, but more is due, so we have to launch this episode fast. It’s coming out soonish, I think.

Marta Andhov  1:11  

So what better option than to discuss this case with a Dutch expert on public procurement? That’s what we will be diving into in a second, in our main. And for our dessert today, we will be talking about how to create a classroom community, what we as teachers can do, and what are some strategies around that? Before we dive into all of it, just to relate back to the point of our structure, really, that to our OG listeners, this is not something new, but maybe we have some newbies along the way, and the structure follows the idea of having an interesting, topical procurement conference around a quite informal dinner setting. So, having that in mind, were there many good dinner parties recently?

Willem Janssen  2:10  

Well, now, I mean, it was good food. I think one that instantly sparked in my mind was the conference dinner, the dinner we had in Utrecht, actually. So, for the public procurement forum that we organised for PhD candidates, it’s already been a while ago, because it was in April, May this year. But it was just fun, in the sense that it just it was a dinner where we met new people, some people that have returned to a forum to present their research, but also, it’s always such a pleasure to welcome everyone in Utrecht. So I really enjoyed that dinner. I was exhausted after a whole day of conferencing, but still really enjoyed it. So that was, that was my highlight. So now back to you. What was your delicious dinner? 

Marta Andhov  2:57  

I actually had a chance to go to Brisbane, Australia, on a big professional procurement conference. And I really enjoyed that because it exposed me to a little bit of a different environment. And of course, you know, contextually, regionally, I’m right now in a different part of the world, so things around procurement are quite different. But also this allowed me, really, you know, to talk about procurement related stuff, you know, with a glass of wine and obviously quite good food, but with suppliers and a sort of commercial buyers also, and it’s really interesting to talk about various aspects that we feel very passionate with people that really doing these things as a part of their business model, and sometimes even really, really question the very core assumptions that we’re having, saying, well, why would you want to have, you know, rigid procurement rules around this. This is all about, you know, commerce, it’s all about business and…

Willem Janssen  4:06  

Because it is public money. 

Marta Andhov  4:08  

Yeah, this is very interesting. This is for a whole other, you know, episode that I really hope to nerd to you about. The whole sort of thing of how perception of spending public money looks in this part of the world, which is quite different to what we are used to in Europe, but that’s on all separate episodes. 

Marta Andhov  4:28  

Let’s dive into what we’re talking about today, the Irado case. That is a Dutch case. It touches on the subject matter that is the first love of Willem’s, which is in-house, so we will see how that excitement around that topic, I’m sure, comes across, which is lovely. And let’s start with a brief intro. Willem, can you tell us a little bit what this case is about in the context of the details of the case, but also the subject matter, and where we are in the in-house situation? What, topically, is the issue there?

Willem Janssen  5:08  

Yeah, I’m gonna, I hope my wife doesn’t listen to this episode, because if we’re talking about my first love, if she were, I don’t know what her response would be, let’s not delve into that further. We’re located in a Dutch case that you rightly said, the Irado case, which is a case that concerns Article 12 in the Directive 2014/24/EU, so the classic procurement directive. Obviously that it relates to the implementation of that provision in the Dutch context, but it mostly tells us something, or will tell us something when the court rules on it, about how we should calculate the activities criteria. And to go really back to basics, you have two exemptions in Article 12. One, you have the institutionalised exemption, which is cooperation with a separate legal entity, and you have the non-institutionalised exemption, which is contractual cooperation between public entities. So there’s no separate legal entity involved. And for both these activities criterion is limiting what they can do on the market. So that’s limited to 20% of their annual turnover. And before I talk a little bit about the Dutch specifics, the directive says something about how you should calculate that turnover, and that’s also what sparked the discussion in this in this case, the directive basically says in the subsection five, the total turnover, or an appropriate alternative activity based measures such as costs incurred by the relevant legal person or contracting authority with respect to services, supplies and works for the three years preceding the contract award shall be taken into consideration, right? So it’s the actual turnover, or if you’ve just started with your corporation, you just want to award the contract, it’s a future-oriented measuring method. What’s unclear in this provision, and the directive doesn’t tell us what turnover? So what turnover are we supposed to use when only 20% of that turnover can be done on the market, right? And so, just to further highlight the example, for the institutionalised exemption when it comes to cooperation with a separate legal entity, that means that, say, if you’re working in waste collection, 80% of that turnover needs to go to the entities that control you as a legal entity, and 20% can be done on the market, right? So what happens in this Dutch case is that there’s a discussion that takes place about what turnover we are exactly supposed to use? Because there is a number of awards that take place. And if we go through the Dutch legal system, there are various interpretations of what turnover should be taken into account. And ultimately, the Dutch courts ask the Courts of Justice to give an answer to the question, should it be option A, the entity that you contract with, and it’s purely the contractual relation between those two entities that dictates what the turnover is, or should it be the holding structure in which that entity provides its services.

Marta Andhov  8:48  

So you might have much more interaction. There might be more… 

Willem Janssen  8:56  

Volume.

Marta Andhov  8:58  

Volume, but also players involved, because you might have more contractual agreements with several subsidiaries, for example, right?

Willem Janssen  9:06  

For sure. So what would happen is, it changes the applicability of the exemption,

Marta Andhov  9:13  

Yeah, the scale of it, right?

Willem Janssen  9:15  

Yes.

Marta Andhov  9:15  

Or reach even. 

Willem Janssen  9:16  

Yes. And it also changes how much you can perform on the market or not, right? And what volume do you need to take into account? So, and this is where I think the Irado case will be one of the milestone cases for in-house and public-public cooperation within EU public procurement law, is because we didn’t really know this, and I think where it comes from, and the Advocate General also notes this, is why I think the impact will be big, is because of a lot of member states, and I know in Finland and at least in the Netherlands and a lot of other countries, what they do is they often separate activities in different legal entities to keep it clean, to say, well, this entity, there’s household waste. This entity does corporate waste, so you don’t have any issues with this 20-80% rule.

Marta Andhov  10:07  

Yeah, yeah.

Willem Janssen  10:08  

If you need to group them together…

Marta Andhov  10:10  

Yeah.

Willem Janssen  10:10  

It could become a lot more difficult. And some have even said that it would put a bomb under a lot of the current corporations that now seem legally compliant, but if the court says, well, that isn’t the case, that might become difficult in the future.

Marta Andhov  10:27  

So I think that we have a good introduction to the placement where we are in the procurement conversation. And this stage, maybe I will just highlight that if we have anyone who is interested in more in-house in general, we have the two additional episodes that we recorded quite some time ago, on Institutionalised In-House Episode Seven and on the Non-Institutional In-House Exemption in Episode Five. So we will send you, and we’ll cross-reference in the notes to those episodes. I think that Willem, you greatly highlighted for us the relevance of the question, really, and the applicability and the impact that it might have on the market, depending on what type of judgment we’re going to get. 

Marta Andhov  11:17  

So the next stage in this, I would want us to have a look at two elements. One, as you mentioned, we do have the advocate’s general opinion. So we already have some indication, at least of what the Advocate General thinks about this matter. And then to get a little bit of your commentary, whether you agree with it or you highlight a different approach that should be taken, tell us a little bit more. So what do we know so far?

Willem Janssen  11:43  

Yes, so far, we have the opinion, and I’m sort of leaning toward going along with that opinion, and I’d be really interested to also hear about the arguments that people opposing this interpretation would take. So basically, there would be two lines of thought, and they somewhat relate to what I said before. The first one is a purely grammatical interpretation. You look at the provision article 12 in the directive, which notes a contractual relationship between one or more contracting authorities and a separate legal entity under private or public law. That’s the relationship that dictates the total turnover, that dictates what 80 and what 20% is. In a way, that is, I think, how a lot of people had interpreted this provision so far. What’s interesting, though, is the Advocate General coins that in, I would say, quite harsh words as a formalistic approach, grammatical, this is…

Marta Andhov  12:48  

A black letter of law. 

Willem Janssen  12:50  

Yes, that’s sort of what his point is. And he dismisses the idea that the contractual relation is key here. And because he goes on and he says, well, the Court of Justice has, in its line of case law, always said that you need to take account of, and I quote, all the facts of the case, both qualitative and quantitative, a sort of generic statement, right? You could say that sort of, to support many ways, but it’s sort of a starting point to say that you need to look at it from a more functional approach. You need to look at, you know, what the purpose is of this, of this provision is, it’s an exemption. The court has always said, we need to interpret those narrowly. Need to ensure that the reach and the objectives of this directive are achieved. So then what I think is interesting is he also supports that by referring to these national practices of setting up two separate legal entities, and he coins that as sort of a circumvention. So he says, well, if you do that, you’re circumventing the law, right? That’s something to debate. I think in the future.

Marta Andhov  13:58  

What do you think, just if we stop for a second here, what is your opinion when you look at that? Because, as you mentioned, it seems that in practical context, in several of the member states, this has been the practice to keep it clean, to keep it straightforward. Is that your impression that some part of that is to sort of get away with not needing to, you know, apply the directive, to apply procurement rules? Or do you think that there are other, maybe practical, more organisational reasons to do it that way?

Willem Janssen  14:33  

Well, it’s a good question. I think it’s something I struggle to explain as well, because when is something like a legitimate interpretation, and when are you circumventing? And I think particularly when it’s uncertain, you don’t really know if you’re safe or not, right? Whereas I think in a very clear-cut case, in the commission merdling case, or the commission Austria case, the Court says something like, well, you set up this in-house structure, and you knew that a couple of months after you would allow private participation that was already foreseen. So who are you kidding? I mean, that’s not what the court said, but that’s how I try to make court judgments a bit more interesting. But who are you kidding? So you couldn’t have awarded that, you knew you were going to open it all up, and so you knew you weren’t going to satisfy the conditions of what was then the institutionalised exemption. So that was like a…

Marta Andhov  15:31  

I’m also, you know, wondering a little bit… In this context, it’s also interesting, because when you are a buyer, would you focus on, and particularly, if you find the rules are a bit blurry or not particularly clear, I would say that, majority the times also legal counsel interpretation, they would advise you is, interpret directly the text right interpret exactly what the words are saying. I think that you would be on this ground level of really commercial interaction and doing the purchasing and conducting the contracts, it is very rarely, I think that we kind of have this approach, but functionally, what public procurement law is about and what we should reach out for, right? So I think that this is also interesting to see, because I think that the literal interpretation and direct interpretation of the rules, it’s very often perceived as a method of trying to counter that uncertainty, because you kind of feel like you know that. So, yeah, it will be interesting to see what comes out of it, because it’s not necessary. I always truly believe in that, you know, you have a couple of contracting authorities that try to do everything that they can get out of the application of the rules, but the majority of the time, people just really want to do the right thing and do the good thing, and it’s just an unknown of what the right way is, right? 

Willem Janssen  17:09  

Yeah. And I think what’s difficult here is it doesn’t say in the text what the average total turnover is. You don’t know.

Marta Andhov  17:16  

Yeah. 

Willem Janssen  17:16  

And I think ultimately, also, I always find this really revealing. When I teach non-lawyers, when I teach them procurement law, whether they are on, whether they’re bidders or contracting authorities, irrespectively, they always say, so, when does the court apply what method? When is it grammatical, and when is it teleological or functional? Or, you know what type of interpretation? 

Marta Andhov  17:39  

No one knows. 

Willem Janssen  17:40  

Well, yeah, no, so you don’t know. You can’t say it’s just going to be that. It’s always a bit of a balancing and arguments, like I just mentioned, that you need to take into account all the facts and and then the Advocate General, very convincingly, says, well, if you look at it functionally, you really get an accurate picture of, like, what’s real and of the effective size of what that controlled legal person actually is, instead of just looking at what their the legal construct is, right, they’re part of a bigger entity and…

Marta Andhov  18:10  

But just to tie it slightly to, again, maybe a bit of interpretation, but also the division between you and the national scope of decision around it, I’m sort of reflecting, going back to your PhD, if I remember correctly, self-regulation, self-organisation? Correct me if I’m misrepresenting.

Willem Janssen  18:34  

You mean the title?

Marta Andhov  18:36  

Yes.

Willem Janssen  18:36  

Oh, we have to cancel our friendship now, Marta, this is not…

Marta Andhov  18:39  

Isn’t that…

Willem Janssen  18:41  

No, you got close. It’s the EU public procurement law and self-organisation.

Marta Andhov  18:46  

That’s what I mean, the second bit, because the second bit is connected with my question, and that is, if the directive is not providing us with an interpretation what the turnover means in this context, isn’t that left to ultimately be decided by the member state, because it goes back to your point about self organization and the whole in-house is a little bit about that, right? Or whether this is a matter of interpretation through of EU procurement law and the functionality of the EU procurement law.

Willem Janssen  19:16  

Well, I mean, I suppose the answer is that it depends on who you ask. If you ask that contracting authority, they would say, Well, this is vague, so national legislators, and also it’s up to our interpretation. I think a more feasible interpretation would be, well, it’s in a directive. So who has the last say? That’s the Court of Justice, and it’s just what it is. And I think the balance. But that’s, I think, where these cases get very interesting is because it is very much a clash between what EU law dictates. And I’m saying this a bit negatively, I suppose, but what it dictates compared to what national member states deem necessary to provide public services, like waste management in this case, in this Dutch case, yeah. So I think that is where it becomes interesting, and the battleground is now the activities criterion, but that underlies all of the cases. That basically is the war between these two levels.

Marta Andhov  20:13  

Can I just as we move forward? Just a cheeky question, what much of in-house cases that you interact in percentage, and how many of them are a waste? Because I can actually, like, feel like, literally, 95% of cases in regards to in-house that I at any point had a chance to, you know, review, interact in any sort of scope, they are usually a waste. It’s like a monopolised sector for in-house.

Willem Janssen  20:40  

So it’s like, you’re right, it’s like waste, but there’s also a lot of IT. So back office services have also been, like, a big discussion point. But I think it’s everything that and why waste is it makes sense, because waste is something that is sort of an inherent government task, like you need, you can’t have, like, an open system, because there’s a risk of public health, you need someone to pick it up. But what’s interesting is, there are multiple ways in which it’s done, right? And also, if I look at Dutch municipalities, some have their own in-house units. Others set up their own legal entity, and others just contract it out to conserve on these or any offer, any ones that are offering it commercially. And I think that’s where the interesting bit lies. And on top of that, why do you see so many cases? Because it’s a very condensed market. It’s a government market. So if you can’t pick up household waste in the city, that’s gone for a long time, because there can only be one entity picking it up.

Marta Andhov  21:36  

Yeah.

Willem Janssen  21:36  

There’s obviously corporate waste that leaves. So that’s, I think, why. There’s an explanation. But in the long time, when I was writing my PHD, I always had this thought of sitting on top, I don’t know why I had this thought of sitting on top of a heap of waste in the front cover. I don’t know why. Glad I didn’t do that. It became this really interesting web which…

Marta Andhov  21:57  

But actually, when you say that right now, I see that a little bit in the cover. You know, like, sort of the idea of how it’s sort of structured and then it’s a more artistic interpretation of that, I think, now that you have… 

Marta Andhov  22:08  

Okay, cool. So we know a little bit about the AG opinion you started to highlight a little bit you’re leaning very much to, if I understand you correctly, in a similar manner to what the AG is saying. There is a certain logic to it. Is there any point of tension that you find that you disagree with, or any point of tension that you would like to highlight that came out of the opinion?

Willem Janssen  22:36  

Well, so I think the reasoning of why it should be interpreted consistently is what I like about the opinion. So the Advocate General basically says two things: we should look at the consolidated turnover. So we should look at the turnover that is related to holding structures, which fall under the obligation to file consolidated financial statements. So under Financial Reporting law, if you’re in a holding structure and you have all these subsidiaries and a mother entity and all these daughters or sons, or whatever you would like to call them, under, and I’ll just phrase it as articles 22 and 24 of the Directive 2013/34, right? So that’s the first step. If you fall under that, you have to consolidate your financial statements. So it makes a lot of sense to say, what’s the 80 and what’s the 20? That’s the consolidated statement. Secondly, what the Advocate General says, and that’s I think, then you’re moving away from, like, what makes 100% sense. I think the further away you get from this type of reasoning, the more we could debate it. Secondly, well, then we would need to look at the single entity doctrine under competition law. So if you don’t fall under the obligation to report consolidated financial statements, then we look at this aspect, because it means that we need to have a consistent interpretation of an economic operator undertaking and how they operate within a certain entity.

Marta Andhov  24:20  

And what do you think about that? Because this is also interesting for me, because there’s a fair bit of discussion, I think, over the years, you know, on ultimately differentiating between procurement and competition law, pointing out how these various terms exactly are to be interpreted differently, that those are different things. So I find it, you know, not surprising. I wouldn’t say surprising, but I would say that it’s rather, you know, one of those things that now we bring in the competition law in itself. Again, kind of back to the conversation, and I don’t know whether that’s not muddying the water even further, though.

Willem Janssen  24:57  

Yeah, so that’s what I think the debate that I was referring to that you could have. So it’s, I think it’s a good argument, but it’s not, I find, on its own, fully convincing to use that, because ultimately, I think so, going back to what it actually means, in a nutshell, it means that the whole entity, the single entity, is, say, responsible for violations of competition. So if a subsidiary violates competition law, it’s also the entity that could be held liable. 

Marta Andhov  25:30  

Yeah.

Willem Janssen  25:31  

So there’s a… as the Court says, it’s an autonomous term which designates the perpetrator of an infringement of competition law, and it covers any entity consisting of personal, tangible and intangible elements which is engaged in economic activity, right as the defining characteristics of an undertaking. So, in a way, I think his argument’s also not of the Advocate General to say, well, they’re the same, but his argument is in another field of law, which is also EU law, we look at it as a whole. And why are we not doing that for competition law? Because here you in terms of liability, we’re also looking for deeper pockets of the holding entity, and we include that in our legal analysis. So I find that, yeah, you could say, Okay, well, it’s a different field of law, but I still find that quite convincing to say, well, EU concepts that operate in this sense, if we had similar yardsticks to interpret them, that would be very useful and also fitting for EU law. So those are the two steps. So it’s either it’s the financial statements are consolidated, or, if you don’t fall under that directive, we need to look at the single entity doctrine. And all of that is to kind of say, well, we need to look at the holding and not towards the grammatical interpretation, but the functional one. And I think what’s interesting is that it’s really to be decided. So I think there’s lots of merit to what the Advocate General is saying, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the court is far more grammatical. I think it can go both ways in this case.

Marta Andhov  27:13  

I wonder how much they also consider how much of a bomb they put under existing structures, or what happens. Yeah, I wonder whether that at all, it will be really interesting. So, you know, I’m really also glad that we got a little bit into conversation around interpretation, because one of the upcoming outcomes of the Purple project that we’re working on is actually paper on interpretation within procurement law, and we right now, are considering, I don’t know whether we will pull through, because it’s obviously a bit resource heavy, but having a little bit of empirical methodology there, and discussing with repertoires and with the advocats general, a little bit, you know, the ways of interpreting and what they considering and what they considering, but I wonder, no one will tell you that, I think, on the record manner, but I wonder if you would kind of have that glass of wine after a conference, whether anyone would share in an informal manner, whether at all a conversation across comes, well, if we are going to make that decision, is going to somehow affect really substantially an existing market across, let’s say, six member states, and whether that at all plays a role, because it, you know, if you look specifically, obviously on the law, it shouldn’t, because it’s what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s functional now, but I wonder, in structures like this, which are…

Willem Janssen  28:49  

Yeah, and I think that’s it, I mean, it’s a relevant point. I think it’s also a discussion that takes place broader than just, than just procurement, right? It’s also like…

Marta Andhov  28:59  

Yeah, in court in general, I think about this.

Willem Janssen  29:00  

Are the judges, are they like, kind of, would you say, part of societal debates, or should they just be totally abstract from it and set that whole discussion and the impact of their judgment aside? Should judges rule from, you know, based on the context that they’ve been given? I mean, I’d love to read, read that research.

Marta Andhov  29:22  

Yeah, that would be interesting. Any last summary, words, or sentences?

Willem Janssen  29:28  

Before we go to dessert? 

Marta Andhov  29:30  

Yes, on the Irado case.

Willem Janssen  29:34  

Yes, just briefly. It’s something that we’ve also looked at in a new, up-and-coming book. So I just wanted to plug that just quickly, if you’ll allow me to shamelessly do that. 

Marta Andhov  29:46  

Yeah, of course, the new upcoming…

Willem Janssen  29:47  

I was hoping you would do it, Marta, but now I’ve just got to do it myself.

Marta Andhov  29:50  

Sorry, I have it in my notes. Actually, this is just when…

Willem Janssen  29:55  

You’re forgiven. I will keep going now. 

Marta Andhov  29:57  

Yes please.

Willem Janssen  29:58  

So I wrote a chapter in the book. It’s chapter four, and it’s about article 12, and this is one of the points of discussion. So there’s, I think, multiple things that need to be reformed. And what I’m looking forward to is this book seeing the light of day, because what’s cool about it, I think, is that we are reforming the public procurement directives, right? And what this book does is actually provide really in-depth research, but also concrete reform proposals for this, for this upcoming reform of the classic directive. So it’s just been sent off to the editor, so hopefully it’ll see the light of day somewhere next year. And yeah, I really hope that it will spark some debate, combining academic rigour with more practical ways of how we can actually make the law better. So I hope that will spark some debate also on this topic and beyond.

Marta Andhov  30:55  

Yeah, so just to supplement what you already mentioned. It is the European Public Procurement Law Group’s next volume. So it’s a large anthology of really combining great scholars who research within public procurement law in Europe. Willem, obviously, is always being a bit too humble. He’s also one of the Co-editors of the book, besides being the author of the chapter. And it is really timely, because hopefully, you can always hope, right? The book comes at the right moment, so it can still impact, really, the reform timeline. And maybe someone is going to pick up the book and get inspired to bring some of those things in.

Willem Janssen  31:40  

Maybe someone will finally read our work, Marta.

Marta Andhov  31:43  

Yes, maybe you just need to make sure that you send a couple of copies, you know, to the Parliament, to the commission, to the right people, you know, straight away. 

Willem Janssen  31:52  

Who knows? Yeah, good point. I’ll take it into account. 

Marta Andhov  31:56  

Do that. Okay, wonderful. So with those words, we conclude the main dish for today’s episodes, and let’s move to the dessert. The dessert today will focus on our roles as teachers, as lecturers and how we can create a classroom community. Can you, Willem, provide a little bit of context for this question, of this topic, rather, and what are some of your main thoughts on how we can do it?

Willem Janssen  32:36 

Well, like always, it’s n=1 or, I suppose n=2, right? So these are just our own reflections. But one thing that I think most of us, as lecturers or legal scholars or beyond that, can somewhat agree on, I think, or I hope, is that a community in a classroom is important. I think the age of learning, where it’s really just sending information through a microphone into a big room that’s really ended, and I don’t think people have ever learned very well from that. Sometimes it can be inspiring to listen to someone, but I think when you really learn is when you get down to business yourself as a student, and you start reflecting and bouncing off ideas together. And what really helps is if you feel like you’re part of a safe, fun, engaging community, because that means that you will want to come to that community and also actively engage in it. So I think that’s one of the reasons why I thought it would be fun to discuss that a bit today.

Marta Andhov  33:36  

So what would be your two main ways? Or just sort of give us two things that come to your mind, that you try to practice in your classroom, to build that sense of community.

Willem Janssen  33:53  

So I don’t think there’s like a blueprint, right, but when I was reflecting on this. I think there are two things that I always do, one, I try to level this student lecture relation, and I know that’s very culturally driven, and it’s to a certain extent, also very Dutch, right? But maybe, you know, we can reflect a bit and learn from each other. So I find that students are more willing to engage with each other, but also with me. If there’s no very formal hierarchical relationship between me and them, what’s clear, of course, is that I will be grading, and I will be setting the boundaries of what I think is wise to learn the learning objectives they sign up for the class. Yeah, but within that context of learning, of the reading materials and how we engage with it, there’s obviously a lot of leeway in how the class will go and how we will go about it. So I find that little things like me sharing behind the scenes of academic life, you can choose to also share things about your own life, your more private life, and I’m not saying that you need to become best friends, but I think it helps to note that we’re all working on a basis of respect. We’re all working together on something. And I think if you, as a lecturer, also step into that community, rather than dictating, you know you’re the community. I think that really can do wonders with how the discussions go in class. So that’s one and two. I think students to feel like they’re part of a community, need to feel like there’s a reason for them to engage with the community, so not just with me, but they need to feel like there’s a reason why they would engage with their peers. Because if you just look at it as like, I need to go to class and take an exam, and that’s an individual exam, and then I leave, and I get a good grade or not, and that’s it. That’s not gonna that doesn’t foster the community. But what I find is really useful is to have assignments where they need to work together in class to prepare, bounce off ideas. Then they go take it to the bigger group. They have an assignment where they have peer-to-peer feedback. So I don’t give the feedback. They give feedback on each other’s draft papers. They learn a lot because, you know, they learn from reading each other’s papers. But also, they will go back to their own paper and reflect on it. So finally, if you see and you can tap into finding value in the peer concept, in peer-to-peer engagement, I think that also helps greatly to build the community.

Marta Andhov  36:28  

And also, I think the learning experience. I’ve read, I cannot direct you very specifically where, but I read some research that also says that, actually, students learn more from giving feedback on a specific assignment to others than writing the assignments themselves. That really helps them to reflect. But how do you grade these things and so on. So, for sure that I think that these things, what is for me always very interesting, is that things work really great when they work. But the challenge, of course, is how we’re dealing also with a sense of withdrawn students or students who don’t show up. And you know, you might have a great community-building exercise or team exercises or assignments. But if suddenly of your group of five, you know, three show up, out of which one is absolutely unprepared, I think that this is, you know, the struggle of this more innovative or really hands-on approach. I’m still, and this is, I’m not saying that by no means to discredit it or take any you know, advantage of it. I’m just saying that you know, for you to show up and do an old school sort of lecture in which you’re very knowledgeable, in which you also are quite charismatic, and you can do your thing. You’re less dependent on how the community reacts to that. You kind of still can deliver a very good quality work to do it the other way around, to foster that community. It’s such a constant sort of massaging of this interaction, of the soft skills, of this not-content-almost related elements, because it works and it’s fantastic, but you need to always sort of try to figure out, well if, if those are not prepared, or they don’t show up, how you how you do that, and that has been connected with the two examples that I would want to show guys, because what I think is a really good, like, if you ask me, what makes a good community in the classroom, I would say you being very structured, organized and focusing on experience, how you’re creating. You know, it sounds a bit like customer service. How do you create a customer experience? And I kind of feel like, if I can structure, we refer to it right now here in Auckland, much more than anywhere else that I heard that term, but we all do a version of it, but we refer to as a flipped classroom, so you’re ultimately giving them a lot of smaller steps and preps that they need to that are part of the assessment, let’s say online and pre-class. And when they come into the classroom, it’s very workshopy. So you facilitate, and they have different exercises and they have different things, but by being very organised and creative, the various steps that they need to fulfil before they show up in the classroom, you sort of really nudge them to come prepared. And then also, I think the impact on the sense of community building is if you can create exercises, interactions that really encourage the students to have more relations with each other outside of the classroom. So if you have a common project that you are to present, well, they will need to meet one way or another outside of a classroom. And I think that building that bond, ultimately, I think helps with building the community.

Willem Janssen  40:07  

No, I think that they’re really nice, nice examples, too. I think ultimately it also, I think, shows that maybe that’s also a common thread between all of them, is that I think there’s a lot of care in there, right? So if you feel like there’s the community cares about my learning goals. So I had this. I’ve always had big discussions. I always when I am in a class and I see four people haven’t shown up, I send them an email. It doesn’t take me much time, because it’s literally, hey, you missed class today. Hope everything’s okay. Kind regards, and in a way, it’s because I genuinely care, right? Because I care. I want them to be there. If they don’t respond and they never show up, of course, I stop caring a bit, because then I’m like, Look, it needs to be a two-way street. But I think also students have sometimes forgotten that this is a community and that the lecturers really care. Like you say, we put in a lot of effort. We think about how to prep. We think about how to, and sometimes it can be. I find it’s very frustrating when your students are not prepared, then, but I think it comes from a sense of like, having to explain that to them, but also to show like, Hey, I’m here for you to get the most out of this class. If you’re not putting in the work at a point, you know, then I will lose a bit of my interest, but I will always care. And if there are doors always open, if you want to return the favour, and we start engaging again. And I think that’s also so super important, because I’m starting to see some colleagues also losing hope a little bit when it comes to, you know, we have this big lecture and no one shows up, or it’s that type of stuff, but I think ultimately, a lot do show up. 

Marta Andhov  41:42  

Yeah.

Willem Janssen  41:43  

And I think some just need to also be explained what the value of a community is, right? And that’s maybe a leadership role as lecturers too.

Marta Andhov  41:53  

You know? I think it is also really interesting, because I, right now, really changed the working environments in the context of that specific aspect, because I moved from a country in which education is not only free, but also it’s quite subsidised. It’s really your, you know, it’s not really perceived, I think, very much, as a privilege of you to be able to go to university, it’s something that you should do, because everyone is doing that. And also, I think that has an impact on how many students perceive higher education, in a country in which you pay for the university, and you pay, you know, sort of heavy money. And I do need to say that I see the difference. I see the difference in how the students at the get-go, I’m not talking about, you know, the sense of building a community, but at the get-go, how they care. How, you know, they sort of feel almost a little bit, and that brings a whole different set of rules, or issues, rather, but there is a certain kind of, you know, not burden, but you kind of feel like, well, I invested in this. I invested in myself. I need to get something out of this.

Willem Janssen  43:09  

Time, money.

Marta Andhov  43:09  

Yeah, or, you know, my parents really went for they sort of stringent themselves up to be able to offer me these opportunities, right? So the students are a bit engaged, but I have, different problem right now, which I think you hopefully in your classrooms, if you are able to send an email, I think that you probably have not experienced that. But I have, you know, some of my classrooms are like 480 students. 

Willem Janssen  43:36  

Yep. 

Marta Andhov  43:37  

And in that case, when you care, so the challenge there is when you care, you just physically cannot facilitate for 480 students, for me, even to meet with each and every one of them for a second. It’s quite a big thing. But yeah, I think that in the end, to conclude today’s episode, it is how I think maybe we talked about how you build a community, but maybe another form of structuring this is to say how we really communicate to our students that we care. You know that we care and that you want them to succeed, and you kind of, someone said to me recently, you just need to, not force them to come, but you just need to create a classroom that feels like a party and just every student wants to be part of it, right? Like it’s something exciting.

Willem Janssen  44:31  

For sure. Yeah. Bring cookies. 

Marta Andhov  44:33  

Bring cookies. All those things, 

Willem Janssen  44:56  

400 of them. 

Marta Andhov  44:57  

Yes. Like, throw you know the little, um, chocolate flavours and things like that for good answers, all these sort of different things I think we all, one way or another, try. 

Willem Janssen  44:48  

Yeah, of course. 

Marta Andhov  44:50  

Fantastic. Well, the Irado case. We’re waiting for the judgment. We hope that this episode comes out just before, so it will still provide us with context of how we can imagine the judgment coming. Thank you, Willem, for guiding us through it and our dessert. A couple of words on creating a class community, we hope that if any of our students will at any point listen to it, they will just be reconfirmed that we care. Yes. Thanks so much for today. This is Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast.

Bestek Voice  45:33  

This was Bestek, the Public Procurement Podcast. Do you want to contribute to today’s discussion and share your thoughts on LinkedIn or Twitter? Do you have an idea for a future episode? Write to us at www.bestekpodcast.com.

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