Awards and Competitions
Conferral of 2021 awards for diversity-sensitive teaching
This year, the awards for diversity-sensitive teaching were conferred for the fourth time in a row. The award is designed to honor lecturers and teaching methods that address diversity, or one or several diversity dimensions (e.g. gender, inclusion, origin, family responsibilities, etc.) in line with TU Dresden’s Diversity Strategy 2030. Once again, a selection committee has awarded four prizes.
A total of EUR 10,000 in prize money was available, funded by the Excellence Strategy of the Federal and State Governments.
All members of TU Dresden were invited to participate by submitting nominations by July 9, 2021. Self-nominations were also possible. Subsequently, four proposals were selected based on the award criteria.
The award-winners are:
Dr. Frank Beier and Tina Czaja (Center for Teacher Education and Educational Research) for the diversity-sensitive seminar room and classroom "Teaching and Learning Space Inclusion" at the Center for Teacher Education and Educational Research. Part of this project included the seminars "Escape from your classroom! Inclusive digital teaching and learning" and "When gender becomes a disadvantage - about gender stereotypes in everyday school life." "Teaching and Learning Space Inclusion" was developed and equipped together with special needs teachers and serves as a seminar room, research facility and project workshop. The multifunctional classroom could be used to test different inclusive teaching and learning arrangements in order to support learners in their individuality. The students had to adapt the findings from the trials to their schools and thus support the handling of heterogeneity in their own classrooms.
Frank Beier and Tina Czaja want to use their award money for the continuation and improvement of the seminars and projects.
Sarah Müller-Sägebrecht (Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation) for the "Innovation and Product Management (IPM)" course taught in English at the Chair of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (Faculty of Business and Economics) with a two-day innovation workshop. As in the 2020 summer semester, the Chair made its lecture content available online in an asynchronous format during the 2021 summer semester. To do so, both the teaching slides in PDF format and MP4 recordings with audio for each lecture chapter were uploaded to OPAL on a weekly basis. The different forms of communication offer students with visual or hearing impairments excellent alternatives. Thanks to the asynchronous lecture format, students with care responsibilities (children, parents, grandparents) were able to flexibly adjust their daily routines to meet their needs without falling behind in their studies. The pandemic denied some students their planned stay abroad at TUD. Thanks to the course being held online and especially due to English being the language of instruction, they were still able to participate in the lecture and online workshop, which they felt to be very conducive to learning. In addition, students had the opportunity to participate in a two-day innovation workshop. In this workshop, the students developed the entire innovation process of a self-developed idea using established creative methods.
Belma Bilir, Mara Fink, Thomas Gasch, Sophia Liebich, Clemens Ziegner, Pierre Zinke, Karin Mannewitz and Laura Schmidt, as well as Anke Langner as head of the project QuaBIS (Qualification of Education and Inclusion Advisors in Saxony) for the seminar "DIY Inclusion at TUD - start, continue, don't stop." We are the QuaBIS project at TUD. QuaBIS means the "Qualification of Education and Inclusion Advisors in Saxony." In the winter semester, we held a seminar from October 2020 to the end of January 2021. The seminar was called "DIY Inclusion at TUD - start, continue, don't stop." Do it yourself: Inclusion seeks to ensure that everyone can participate and that no one is excluded. Therefore, students were asked to consider whether the university works well for everyone. Many students in the seminar get on well at TUD. They don't experience any obstacles. That's why we assigned them different roles. What is it like to have to work a lot alongside your studies or take care of your grandpa? What if there is no toilet you can go to? What if you have holidays or prayer times that you can't celebrate because it would interfere with university time? Or what if it were difficult to participate for other reasons, because the conditions at the university do not fit well with your life and needs? Inclusion also means that things change for people, not that people change so that they can belong. Students then had to come up with ways to change TUD so that everyone could study well. We really enjoyed working with everyone to figure out how to adapt things together. At the beginning, we were in the gym in August Bebel Straße so that everyone could maintain their distance. Then, during the second lockdown, all activities took place online.
Hannah Pool (International Relations) for the seminar "Borders and Migration to Europe." The seminar "Borders and Migration to Europe" dealt with the history, the meaning, and the role of state borders. The seminar linked theoretical discussion with perspectives from the real world through guest speakers from academia, activism, international organizations, and the arts. The integration of documentary films, artistic video installations, and podcasts allowed for different forms of engaging in discussions about the topic of migration and borders. On a meta-level, the seminar also addressed the creation of scientific knowledge and the participants' own positioning in academia. The seminar thus started with a thematic orientation on this topic. The students were trained to be aware of academic biases in the area of publication hierarchies, gender, and research funding.
Lecturer Hannah Pool and her students intend to use the award money for a workshop on diversity in academia with guest speakers. Moreover, they want to hold a monthly meeting to share their experiences on how they progress with their studies during the winter semester.
The award ceremony will be held at the Senate meeting on October 13, 2021. The Vice-Rectorate University Culture and the Unit Diversity Management would like to congratulate the award-winners on their success!
© Christina Kurby
Representative for Diversity Management
NameDr. Cornelia Hähne
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