Emotions in higher education teaching: foundations and design options

Emotions such as enthusiasm, boredom, or test anxiety are a central part of teaching and learning processes and significantly influence students’ motivation, engagement, and learning success. But how can instructors purposefully integrate emotions to improve the learning atmosphere in their courses and foster student motivation?

In this workshop, you will engage intensively with the role of emotions in higher education teaching. The course begins with foundational concepts: What are emotions, how do they emerge in teaching and learning contexts, and how do they affect learning processes and outcomes? Building on this, you will become familiar with the principles of emotional design: using the ARCS model (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction), you will collaboratively develop ideas for deliberately addressing emotions in teaching and sustainably enhancing student motivation.

Another focus of the workshop is mindfulness as a higher education didactic approach. You will learn how mindfulness is connected to the professional handling of emotions in teaching and try out mindfulness-based exercises. In doing so, you will explore which formats can be meaningfully and effectively integrated into your own teaching practice.

In addition to theoretical input and practice-oriented work phases, you will experience emotion- and mindfulness-based methods from a participant’s perspective and reflect on their potential for your own teaching.

The workshop takes place across three consecutive synchronous online sessions (total 12 AE).

Optionally, you can receive an additional 4 AE by completing a workbook after the course, applying the learned approaches and methods to your own teaching.