HBO-meets-WO to discuss the impact of AI in Software Engineering Education

18-Mar-2026

At the end of last year, circa 40 representatives of universities of applied sciences (HBO) and of research universities (WO) in the Netherlands came together to discuss the role and impact of (generative) artificial intelligence on software engineering education.

The initiative originated from VERSEN’s working group on software engineering education and was co-organized by Utrecht University (Hieke Keuning and Fabiano Dalpiaz) and Hogeschool Utrecht (Roelant Ossewaarde). As a first-of-its-kind, it aimed to stimulate the dialogue between two flavors of higher education, both delivering future software engineers but with often different educational models.

There were two invited talks to provide different perspectives from HBO and WO. Lynn Epping (Hogeschool Utrecht) started her talk with the premise that software engineers are social scientists, as they design and create solutions for societal and organizational problems. Therefore, educators should cultivate software engineers who, besides possessing deep technical knowledge, are able to design intentional and sustainable solutions. Tom van Dijk (University of Twente) explained how policies to prevent plagiarism through AI use have been the initial reaction globally at the WO level, and then went into more forward-looking ways to integrate AI in programming education. The talks were followed by round table discussions on three topics: curriculum, students’ learning, and assessment.

A full summary of the day can be found online. There are active plans on organizing a second edition of the event, which is likely to cover the topic of the “Student Journey”.