Teaching Portraits

© keins

Prof. Melanie Humann, Chair of Urbanism and Design, won an award for the “E-Learning Gem 2021” in the category of “Lectures with more than one hundred students” with her digital implementation of the lecture “Urban Planning 1”.

• How long have you been lecturing at TU Dresden and what does teaching mean to you?

I joined TUD’s Institute of Urban Planning in 2018. I have been teaching for over eight years as a professor and before that as a research assistant at various universities in Germany.

We have highly individualized student support at the Faculty because of the urban architectural design teaching. Therefore, we try to provide special encouragement to our students to think and work very independently, creatively and conceptually. Of course, we also work hard to impart knowledge. But I am concerned with placing a very strong emphasis on independent thinking and conceptualization.

Due to the dynamic developments of our time, we can no longer rely solely on existing knowledge, but must permanently search for new ways, for example, to deal with the effects of the climate crisis or digitalization. It is of course helpful if you can not only reproduce knowledge, but also develop and design solutions independently.

It is important for me to have enough freedom in teaching – to try things out and fail. I often tell students, “If you’re going to fail, you’d better do it now and not in your professional life.” It’s important to get that experience while you’re still at university so you can acquire strategies for the job. 

What does teaching mean to me overall? I believe that teaching consists of providing a Compass with which students can orient themselves well in their professional field – despite the presumably major changes in the framework conditions over the next decades.

• How did you manage the switch from in-person to online teaching?

That was a big challenge at first. I had to rely on the students to work on the documents I sent them. Therefore, we compiled very diverse teaching materials, for example excerpts from literature, links to videos and blogs or to planning offices – in other words, everything that motivates self-study. The teaching materials were more diverse than in my in-person lecture.

Online teaching has forced us to think harder about what materials are really appropriate for independent study, what open-source media are now available, and what communication formats students also enjoy. What are the new projects and platforms? What are some films that address the topic? This is how we cobbled together the “corona packets” – independent study packets that had to be “consumed” in a certain time. If some were a little more interested, they could also view additional materials and do research on them.

Overall, the transition has been a great learning process for us and the response from students has been positive. We will now take the lessons learned from purely online teaching into hybrid or in-person teaching, and continue to consider what formats and tools can be usefully employed post-pandemic.

• What are the positive aspects and limitations of online teaching for your courses?

We have had both positive and negative experiences. After four semesters, we have gained a pretty good overview of which of our teaching modules work well digitally and where new opportunities are even opening up as a result of the digital tools. For example, we have had very good experiences with the digital whiteboards, which strongly promote collaboration and knowledge transfer between students. We set up a digital whiteboard for all seminars, which students actively worked on throughout the semester. They could put their work and research in there, and the other students had access to the knowledge base that it created. The students also presented on the boards, and as the supervisor, I always knew the status of the work.

A nice side effect of the ad hoc changeover was also that students gave us more feedback on their own accord – for example, on the quality and delivery of videos, on their own digital capabilities, or on other topics that we often don’t even notice from the instructors’ perspective. Especially now, during the mixture of in-person and online teaching, many students have reported to us, for example, that they don’t even make it to the courses on time because they start the day studying at home and then have an on-site course. Through this feedback culture, teaching has once again been shaped quite actively by teachers and students together. 

For the past three semesters, we have also hosted a biweekly digital Teatime Talk event, to which external guests were invited to give students brief input on a specific topic. Video conferencing tools have made it much easier to invite a large network of experts and to make their expertise directly, cheaply and easily available for teaching.

Moving on to the negative aspects... design teaching is not something we can do online. We tried everything, using iPads, pens and 3D models. This quick “I’ll push something back and forth in the models” or “I’ll draw a sketch, throw it away and draw a new one” just doesn’t work digitally, and personal contact is incredibly important at this point. That’s why we also did as much in-person teaching as possible – if it was possible according to the corona guidelines – and actually also had workshops lasting several days in a row. We rented larger halls in the city specially for this purpose.

• What do you think motivates students the most?

Above all, the exchange with each other. I have the impression that the current generation of students is no longer as competitively oriented. It is no longer about being the best, but rather about collaboration and knowledge sharing, finding common solutions to future problems, it is about the subject itself.

In recent years, the desire of students to work and engage intensively on societal issues such as climate change or the circular economy – either through research or real-world inquiries – has become apparent during their studies. Especially in our area, because we are very close to the issues of the living environment with construction and urban development. With teaching, we lay the groundwork for students to be able deal with these future topics at an early stage.

• Is there anything you would recommend to your colleagues in terms of digital teaching?

Just try it out and let the students try and co-design in the process. As I said, this is how we discovered that digital whiteboards work for us and now we wouldn’t want to do without them. I could imagine that this is a good option for many special fields and can be interesting in the long run. At its best, digital teaching should go beyond implementing “analog” teaching with digital tools. 

We were mainly concerned with designing the framework for independent study in such an attractive way that students can also acquire their knowledge well in the online mode. But it also includes reflecting on the forms of examination and, in this context, realizing that some forms of examination are outdated – that they no longer fit in with our teaching or philosophy.

And what has become more important to me personally – or what I am more aware of is: the personal contact with the students. That simply cannot be replaced by any digital tool.

We would like to thank Prof. Humann very much for the interview and are looking forward to the further development of (digital) teaching at the chair.

Dr. John Martinovic, Research Associate at the Institute of Numerical Mathematics, won an award for the “2021 gem of e-learning” in the category of “Courses with 31 to 100 students” for his lecture “Optimization – Basic Concepts.”

Dr. Martinovic – How long have you been lecturing at TU Dresden and what does teaching mean to you?

Apart from minor episodes as a student assistant during my own studies, I have been teaching in the classical sense at TU Dresden since 2015. At that time, I was in the early phase of my doctorate in a third party-funded project, the continuation of which was not yet certain. Fortunately, another institute needed a substitute in the middle of the semester to maintain certain teaching duties, so that through this “detour” I was not only able to gain initial experience in leading exercise groups, but also to place my doctorate on a more solid foundation (in financial and planning terms). Since then, I have been continuously involved in teaching and have worked there as a training supervisor, course assistant and lecturer, in particular in mathematics education for the courses of mechanical engineering, traffic engineering, chemistry and computer science, as well as being responsible for some optimization lectures for mathematics and the teaching profession.

For me, teaching is the most significant component within the canon of academic tasks. Good teaching is the indirect starting point of all university action, since it first helps students to master the sometimes difficult transition from school to university, and at the same time encourages them to deal with the topics covered themselves, possibly even to become enthusiastic about applying them later in a social context or to contribute to the second elementary pillar of any university operation within the framework of their own research work. Nevertheless, I have the feeling that in hiring or appointment procedures, research activities are given first priority, while teaching experience and success are treated as secondary. I have no delusion that this weighting will change in the near future, but I would like to see a more balanced appreciation of both areas of work overall, as this is an important basis for long-term quality assurance in the area of teaching.

How did you manage the switch from on-site to online teaching?

To be honest, not well at all. Especially at the beginning, when the university closed its doors for an unforeseeable period of time, you were largely left to your own devices in dealing with the challenges that came with it. This is not meant as an accusation, because no one really knew what was coming or how long the pandemic would ultimately accompany our lives. Nobody was really prepared, neither technically nor methodologically. My first steps in online teaching (for mathematics exercises), which from today’s point of view are not very sophisticated, were consequently limited to providing detailed solutions and being “available” for questions in chat rooms or video conferences. As expected, this was not particularly well received!

It was not until the following months, when the personal exchange among colleagues, but also the support offered by the university, e.g. in the area of tutorials and software licenses, steadily increased, that I gradually succeeded in offering a decent alternative to classroom teaching. It was certainly also helpful that I was appointed as a substitute professor for the duration of a semester and thus had to independently take responsibility for more important teaching tasks. On the one hand, this was a personal incentive; on the other, it offered sufficient opportunities to develop in the right direction, true to the idea of “learning by doing.”

What are the positive aspects and the limitations of online teaching for your courses?

I think it is imperative to answer this question from the perspective of the students, since they have had to bear the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic in the university context. We lecturers had to deal with all kinds of inconveniences during the transition to digital teaching, but in most cases we did not face any existential challenges. On the contrary: Providing asynchronous lectures and holding courses not in one singular location has made the otherwise very regular, in-person and deadline-oriented work during a normal semester more flexible in many places, and certainly not to personal disadvantage.

However, I myself teach in a subject area that thrives on interaction in the lecture hall. Mathematics still works largely with blackboard-and-chalk and question-and-answer format. Ideally, solution ideas and derivations should be discussed and developed together systematically. This is difficult from a distance. In this respect, I think that online teaching in mathematics has been immensely challenging for many students, especially in teaching export. I therefore have great respect for all those who had to overcome difficulties in understanding and motivation largely on their own during this phase and were able to make progress in their studies despite unfamiliar conditions.

If I had to name a challenge for my personal work, I would mention the sensible design of alternative forms of examination. Mathematics examinations consist to a decent extent of conventional arithmetic problems; conducting oral examinations is rather unusual and not an option, especially in larger courses. So if you don’t want to fundamentally change the basic character of an exam, you have to take the risk that technical aids can be used relatively easily to find or check solutions, even though I don’t want to accuse anyone of doing this, of course. To this day, I have not found a proper and convincing solution to this problem.

What do you think motivates students the most?

I take a more rational and pragmatic approach, according to which many students already bring certain interests, expectations, and experiences to the university, which they document for instance through their chosen field of study. In certain cases, a teacher may be able to light a fire – but in mathematics, which is commonly (and not entirely unjustifiably) perceived as dry and theoretical, it is difficult to motivate someone against their inner convictions or personal feelings by means of vivid experiments or spectacular findings. For example, I often hear the guiding principle “the main thing is to pass!” – perhaps an understandable reaction to “self-fulfilling prophecies” of earlier cohorts, a majority consensus in society for the assessment of STEM disciplines, and the actual expectations of the field I represent. However, one should not make the mistake of interpreting this as factual disinterest. In many cases, a course of study simply demands that priorities be set; the motives for their concrete design can be quite different. I think that if you succeed in giving students the feeling that you are doing everything to accompany and support them on this sometimes arduous path, they will gladly reward you with their own motivation and cooperation, even if mathematics as such is not one of their closest friends.

And is there anything you would recommend to your colleagues in terms of digital teaching?

Admittedly, I don’t have a patent remedy and I don’t think that I have reinvented the wheel with my methods, so to speak. It depends, as so often in life, on good chemistry between the “sender” and “receiver.” This may develop for very different reasons or may not develop at all – in any case, the audience decides for themselves. In the end, the most important thing is to remain authentic, try not to pretend, and at best admit your weaknesses with humor. This also includes being aware at all times of one’s role as a translator of “technical language -> German,” thus communicating explanations in a manner appropriate to the addressee and, in some cases, stepping back behind one’s own claims to exactness for the sake of better comprehension. It was probably helpful that I only finished my own studies not too long ago and that I was therefore able to reconstruct quite well the concrete way in which I myself once found an approach to difficult topics.

We thank Dr. Martinovic very much for the interview and are looking forward to the further development of his (digital) teaching.

In the following teaching portrait, we sit down with Dr. Christine Andrä from the Chair of Political Science. Her teaching earned her the teaching award of the Association of Friends and Sponsors of TU Dresden. The interview is available in text (see below) and as a podcast.

“A great amount of creativity and interactivity as well as an open and participatory atmosphere” is how the Institute of Political Science describes the seminar of the recently selected winner of the teaching award given out by the Association of Friends and Sponsors of TU Dresden. Furthermore, the website of the Institute of Political Science reads: “She manages to fill the Zoom room with life and stimulating discussion despite the forced move to online teaching thanks to her engaging and open-minded nature.” The following interview between Dr. Christine Andrä and Dr. Ingo Blaich from the Digital Teaching Team at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences gives insight into exactly how Dr. Andrä achieved this and what specific adaptations digital teaching entails. Enjoy!

IB: Ms. Andrä, you received the teaching award of the Association of Friends and Sponsors of TU Dresden in the 2021/22 winter semester and we are very pleased that you are available for an interview with the Digital Teaching Team. The first thing we want to know, of course, is: For which course were you awarded this prize and what was the special didactic feature of that course?

CÄ: Thank you very much for inviting me to this interview. I was incredibly happy to receive this teaching award. This is a great award, also for the whole team behind the course. I will say something more about that in a moment. The course was a preliminary seminar called “Introduction to the Study of International Relations,” primarily for students in the 2^nd semester of their Bachelor’s degree program, though there were a few who came from other degree programs and took the preliminary seminar in higher semesters. But, the majority of the students were from the 2^nd semester of political science in the different programs we have there, for instance the Bachelor’s in Teacher Training or Bachelor’s of International Relations. This was a big seminar. I double-checked: 100 students were enrolled. Not all of them joined every Zoom session, of course. We had weekly Zoom sessions that were full every time. The preliminary seminar took place within the framework of a fundamental module that we have in political science, namely the fundamental module of international relations. There is also a lecture and a tutorial. There are several preliminary seminars running parallel to each other, one of which I gave. The content of this fundamental module and especially of the preliminary seminar focuses in particular on the theoretical foundations of international relations. In the preliminary seminar, we do a lot of work with texts to introduce students to scholarly texts in our field for the first time.

The special feature in the didactic implementation was that in my preliminary seminar and in the other preliminary seminars there were fixed small groups of 5–7 students each, who met repeatedly week after week for a portion of the seminar. The seminar started with us greeting each other and then I asked if there were any questions, comments or concerns to start with. Then, it was straight into the small groups, where students met increasingly familiar faces throughout the semester. Students were also always given leading prompts in advance about the texts they were supposed to have read. These were first discussed in the small groups and then discussed in the plenary. I went through the breakout sessions during the small group work, of course, and looked to see how things were going and what the snags were. To a certain degree, this was supposed to serve the discussion of content, and it worked quite well. I suspect that many of us faculty experienced sometimes silent, not particularly discussion-friendly events during the pandemic. Many students tell me that they are more inhibited when sitting in front of screens, as they don’t know who the others are behind those tiles – even if they have a picture visible, which many do not. And in the small group work, it was clear that everyone needed to get involved on a regular basis. It was felt to be a more conducive space for discussion. So, the discussions afterwards went much more smoothly. At the same time, I think it was very important for students in the early semesters to get to know each other because of the social aspect. Unfortunately, this doesn’t take priority in the times of Zoom. Many students did not move to Dresden at all. This is a generation of students who didn’t start studying until after the pandemic began. I think a lot of people liked that. I also found it nice to gradually witness the dynamics in small groups. We also had a brief welcome moment in each session, with a breakout feature on Zoom where I would randomly send two students into a breakout session together for two to three minutes. Here, two students always said hello to each other, as one would ultimately do when walking into the seminar classroom.

This seminar was flanked in the module by the lecture and tutorial content. And that is why the teaching award is also an award for the entire team of this basic module. There were a total of ten of us, including the tutors who managed it. So, there is a coordination effort as well, which was done through Zoom. The arrangements were virtual during the summer semester.

IB: That means, your seminar was thematically linked to the lecture and tutorials, so that a common thematic bracket was created?

CÄ: Exactly. So that in the seminar, and in the tutorials that took place as well, I also responded to questions about the lecture content when they arose. It was envisaged that the lecture would lay a foundation of content. Then, the students read texts in preparation for the seminar, which we then discussed. And in the tutorials, techniques of scientific work were practiced and empirical case studies were played out. That was the linking element.

IB: What differences do you see in the preparation and design of courses between digital teaching and in-person teaching after several semesters of predominantly digital teaching? Is this still clearly visible? Are there any habituation effects, or do significant differences remain even after two years?

CÄ: I believe both. I think that many of my teaching principles, which are fundamentally important to me, apply just as much to digital teaching as they do to classroom teaching. Regarding the differences: I remember my first online semester, which was also my very first semester at TU Dresden. I was in the same boat as many students. I only started working in Dresden during the pandemic. Before my very first semester, I was in an experimental mood and thought up all sorts of things out of the blue because I had no experience at all. After all, that’s how most of us felt. By now it’s a little more routine, as you said.

And there are a few points that I now know I need to consider in particular. First of all, as already mentioned in the description of this seminar, I have to plan more time for social activities and interaction and explicit methods and tools to this end. I have to make this explicit as an element that belongs to a course or seminar. That doesn’t just happen on the side, like you have with in-person teaching, especially in seminars, maybe less so in lectures. Second, I think online teaching is demanding in a different way. Students tell me this very often. Of course, because of the enormous amount of screen time, but above all because it requires a great deal of self-organization and self-motivation from the students. We sometimes underestimate this because it is essentially invisible to us. Until we ask about it or someone tells us. I think I have to somehow account for this extra effort in the planning and in the design. In particular, which content I structure as well as which methods I use and how I apply them. And the third thing is – although I don’t know if that’s just my experience or if it’s shared more broadly: I have observed that in online teaching, depth of content is easier to achieve or implement than breadth of content. Of course, this sometimes clashes with seminar objectives. When I have an introductory event, I just want to go broad. Sometimes that’s not so easy. I think that these are simply advantages and disadvantages that we have had to live with, particularly during the pandemic, and make the best of. After all, achieving depth instead is not a bad thing. But it’s also good if we can mix online and in-person formats a bit more in the future.

IB: What could be the reason that depth is easier to achieve and breadth more difficult? In traditional classroom teaching, it’s rather the other way around: That is, it’s easier to take a look here and there and it’s more difficult to deal with a topic in depth.

CÄ: I’m not sure. I think it might be because of the different social dynamics, among other things. No matter what methods we come up with, everyone is a little less spontaneous and inevitably more focused in the exchange. With virtual methods, I can simply demand and promote a deep, focused discussion of a single point more effectively. And I think it might be, again, the point of self-organization: Students are less able to survey the breadth of the subject and content, especially at the beginning of their studies. And the more teaching has to rely on self-organization, the more difficult it therefore becomes to achieve this breadth of content. But I would actually be interested to know if there are any studies on this. Someone will certainly have already addressed this from a scientific perspective. Above all, whether this can be observed in general and what the reason is for this.

IB: This is precisely what will certainly be the subject of future reappraisal and further development of teaching against the background of the pandemic experience, in order to be able to benefit from it for further university teaching. Finally, one more question. In general: What do you enjoy about online teaching and where would you see future challenges for yourself, especially in the further use of digital teaching elements?

CÄ: I love teaching because I can accompany my students a little bit as they learn and because I am always thrilled when moments of learning together succeed, for instance in project work, when the students’ creativity really comes out. That’s where I’ve had a lot of great moments in online teaching over the past few semesters. Not in the seminar we just talked about, but in more advanced seminars. Students recorded podcasts themselves, populated Instagram channels on our seminar topics, designed padlets and blogs, and overall contributed enormously. And they did a great job of interweaving the content with different forms that they came up with themselves. To guide and accompany something like this is a lot of fun for me.

Among the challenges: I would very much like to take the good from online teaching if we go back to more in-person teaching or if we can mix in-person and online teaching more and more flexibly in the future. Before the pandemic, we probably all had very set ideas about what a seminar was and what a seminar session was, including from our own study experiences. This has inevitably become somewhat more flexible. And opened up room for maneuvering. By no means were we necessarily asked for this creative room to maneuver, but there was a lot of room to try out and experiment. I would like to continue doing that and also maintain the joy of it. What I generally found challenging in online teaching, even more so than with in-person teaching, was not losing students. Unfortunately, despite all efforts, this has happened and continues to happen again and again. And that’s where you have to stay on the ball as much as possible. If I notice that someone is no longer coming or seems to have logged off, then I also ask. Of course, that doesn’t always work out, especially in very large courses, because I can’t always keep track of everyone. I hope this will be a little easier now in person or partially in person. Because it’s already something different and conducive to all kinds of things when we meet in person – as great as it is now that we have Zoom or BigBlueButton or all these other tools – it’s still something different. So, given that challenge, I’m quite hopeful that we’re all now headed into a somewhat easier summer term together, hopefully.

IB: That’s right, I think we all hope that. I’m curious to see how it turns out then.

CÄ: We all deserved it very much, too. The teachers, but especially the students. It took a lot out of them.

IB: We wish you all the best for the summer semester and all future semesters as well as more wonderful teaching success. Once again, congratulations from the Digital Teaching Team on your teaching award and thank you very much for this interview.

HD: Herr Dutsch, wie lange dozieren Sie schon an der TU Dresden und was bedeutet die Lehre für Sie?

SD: Ich bin seit Gründung der Fakultät Verkehrswissenschaften 1992 an der TU Dresden und war davor schon an der Hochschule für Verkehrswesen tätig. Als ich dort im März 1986 begann, wurde ich sofort gebeten, Lehrveranstaltungen zu halten. Meine allerersten Seminare waren Übungen zum Wagenlaufplan, die ich direkt nach Dienstantritt übernehmen sollte. Diese zeichneten sich durch eine hohe Stoffmenge aus. Seitdem bin ich kontinuierlich in der Lehre gewesen. Die Zahl an Übungen und Seminare wuchs schnell, mit dem Weggang meines ersten Professors kam die Vorlesungsreihe hinzu und nach dem Weggang dessen Nachfolgers vor wenigen Jahren wurde es nochmal mehr. Die Lehre macht mir großen Spaß. Es ist für mich und die Universität eine ganz wichtige Tätigkeit, um das Wissen weiterzugeben und fähige junge Leute auszubilden.

HD: Was hat Ihnen bei der Planung und Umsetzung Ihres Lehrkonzepts besonders Spaß gemacht?

SD: Es war die Möglichkeit und gleichzeitig die Notwendigkeit, den gesamten Stoff neu zu durchdenken, zu systematisieren und zu modernisieren. Bei den Vorlesungen habe ich mir eine ganze Menge Gedanken gemacht: Was wähle ich in Vorlesung und Übung aus? Was sind neue Dinge, was sind alte, die abzulösen sind? Und natürlich die Frage: Wie stelle ich es anschaulich und verständlich dar? Diese Frage stand vor allem bei den Übungen im Vordergrund, als ich Lehrvideos und Selbsttests anfertigte.

HD: Welche positiven Aspekte oder auch Einschränkungen ergeben sich aus der digitalen Lehre für Ihre Lehrveranstaltungen?

SD: Ich fange mal mit den Einschränkungen an und benenne sie ganz ehrlich: Meine Vorlesungen und Übungen leben auch von vielen Beispielen aus der Praxis. Als ich insbesondere während der Corona-Pandemie begann, Lehrvideos zu erstellen, habe ich dort aus Rücksicht auf die Beteiligten der Praxisunternehmen auf einen Teil verzichten müssen in der digitalen Lehre. Das ist mir als Einschränkung bewusstgeworden. Einiges bekommt man nur herüber, wenn man mit den Studierenden in einem Raum ist. Es ist eine wesentliche Einschränkung. Eine andere ist die Interaktion mit den Studierenden, die mehr Zeit erfordert. Das unmittelbare Feedback, wenn man nicht in Präsenz ist, holt man mit einem Forum oder E-Mails nur schwer ein.

Ein Vorteil ist, dass man die digitalen Mittel – Videos, Selbsttest, PowerPoint-Folien – mehrfach nutzen kann. Zu meinem Erstaunen wurden viele Sachverhalte ebenso gut oder vielleicht sogar besser verstanden. Das erkläre ich mir damit, dass ich mir einerseits didaktische Gedanken gemacht habe, die Dinge in Lehrvideos besonders verständlich darzustellen und andererseits die Möglichkeit besteht, sich schwierige Dinge mehrfach anzuschauen. Wenn ich bisher etwas an die Tafel geschrieben habe, und es war ein Student nicht anwesend oder abgelenkt, hat er es nicht mitbekommen. Jetzt kann er das im Video nochmal anschauen und so nachholen.

Ein Effekt ist auch, dass man als Lehrender auf einem Video sowohl in der grafischen als auch bei der sprachlichen Darstellung exakter ist. Wenn bei der Erstellung etwas nicht perfekt funktioniert hat, dann geht man meistens zurück und korrigiert den Fehler und spricht den Sachverhalt nochmal neu auf. Überrascht war ich über die Güte der Studierenden: Auch während Corona konnte ich nicht wirklich erkennen, dass die Studierenden schlechter waren als sonst, auch nicht später in Studien- oder Diplomarbeiten. Das Konzept ging also auf.

Heute muss man abwägen: Im Hörsaal habe ich direkten Kontakt zu den Hörern, mit einem Video habe ich die Möglichkeit, Dinge konzentrierter und exakter in Bild und Wort darzustellen. Und es ergibt sich ganz klar der positive Effekt, dass Studierende, die an Übung oder Vorlesung nicht teilnehmen konnten, die Dinge mit Videos und Selbsttests im Selbststudium einfach nacharbeiten können, ohne auf die Mitschriften anderer Kommilitonen angewiesen zu sein. Und ich kann jetzt mehrere gleichberechtigte Lösungsvarianten zum selben Problem bringen: einige auf dem Video, andere in der Präsenzlehre.

HD: Was schätzen Sie, motiviert die Studierenden am meisten?

SD: Zu allererst natürlich das Thema. Es ist praktisch und beliebt, es führt zu hohen Teilnahmeraten und zu einer hohen Belegung der Wahlpflichtfächer. Und dann die lebendige, mit Beispielen versehene Darstellung des Stoffes. Anhand vieler Beispiele wird den Studierenden klar, auf was sie später zu achten haben. Deswegen habe ich immer in der Präsenzlehre versucht, viele Beispiele zu bringen und das habe ich auch in die Videos übernommen, soweit das möglich war.

HD: Und gibt´s da etwas, dass Sie Ihren Kolleginnen und Kollegen in Bezug auf die digitale Lehre empfehlen würden?

SD: Man muss einfach ausprobieren, was bei den Studierenden wie ankommt. Waren am Anfang die Selbsttests sehr beliebt, werden diese wieder weniger genutzt. Jetzt bieten wir die Übungen auch als Videos an. Nachdem sich in den Vorlesungen vieles weiterentwickelt hat, stellen wir die Lehrvideos nicht mehr zur Verfügung, weil wir es nicht geschafft haben, das Wort nachzuführen. Dafür haben wir dort aussagekräftige Foliensätze. Die Studierenden enthalten jetzt also ein ganzes Portfolio an Produkten. Und: der erwähnte Qualitätssprung der Inhalte, der durch das Aufnehmen der Lehrvideos entstand, führt heute rückwärts zu einer Verbesserung der Präsenz-Lehrveranstaltungen.

HD: Vielen Dank für das Gespräch.