For the first time - the Day of Teaching became digital
On May 13, 2020 the Day of Teaching took place at the HFT Stuttgart, dealing with subject-related university didactics. First time online due to the current situation! Just in time the "digital waiting room" filled up before the participants were able to enter the official event room in Zoom.
Host speaker Mirjana Gajic, head of the Didactics Centre, welcomed over 80 logged in university members. Afterwards Rector Prof. Rainer Franke thanked all participants for their commitment over the past weeks and for the (virtual) exchange. Durig the ongoing special summer semester it worked out very well at the HFT Stuttgart . Prof. Dr. Lutz Gaspers, Vice Rector for Studies and Teaching pointed out that sucessfull digital forms of teaching worked out only because of everyones participation. The presented programme showed the importants of networking, improvisation and reflection on one's own teaching.
The next speaker Prof. Dr. Marco Winzker, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences and Director of the Centre for Innovation and Development in Teaching, entered the "virtual stage". His keynote dealt with the question of how to put teaching ideas into practice. Based on ideas about good teaching, three innovative formats were presented, starting on different levels of university teaching. In addition to the evaluation with the help of Learning Analytics, possibilities for the realization of innovative, sucsessfull teaching were presented and discussed. Taking the current situation into account, he addressed the topic of "audience retention" and clarified how the attention span in videos can be maintained over a longer period of time.
The "mysterious silence" in favour of a stable connection was interrupted after the virtual plenum was opened for questions asked orally or written via chat.
The next speaker was Prof. Thorsten Burgmer from Cologne. He is Professor of Design and Energy Concepts at the Technical University. How can student thesis be examined as objectively as possible and what role does the gut feeling of the examiner play in this? He aswered in his contribution clearly in his contribution, supported by colourful pictures. Prof. Burgmer opend his speach by responding: "I have no answers to the questions I have asked! I will keep searching for them!" During Prof. Burgmer's speech, the participants had the opportunity to react to formulated statements via mobile phone or computer. It was obvious that the transparency of evaluation criteria plays a particularly important role for students.
"Goodbye and first of all many thanks to my students who are here today" this is how Prof. Dr. Jörg Homberger, last year's winner of the teaching award of the HFT Stuttgart, began his contribution. As an expert in the field of Artificial Intelligence, all participants were able to draw inspiration from his teaching idea and let themselves be carried away into the world of agents in "Schlag den Prof". He answered all chat questions and had time for some question and answer.
In summary, all lecturing professors agreed that good teaching must be fun. "What is good teaching?" in a nutshell
On this digital day of teaching even the coffee breaks were also used interactively: For example, all participants were able to vote on a keyword for the summer semester. on a live screen it became a colourful word cloud. It shows the psoitive experiences of almost all those participants. Posts could also be attached to a digital pinboard.
The closing speech was given by Prof. Gaspers, who thanked all those involved, both externally and internally, A big thank you went to the staff of the Didactics Centre, who made the "Teaching Day 2020 goes digital" possible.
The peak of 97 listeners who logged on to the event showed that the opportunity to experience the Day of Teaching digitally was very well accepted and used. The Teaching Day was also accompanied by the staff unit Marketing and Press via the social media channels of the HFT Stuttgart. Over 100 people followed the stories on Instagram and Facebook, for example.
Further contributions from external speakers and from professors and students of the HFT Stuttgart are available to university members for two weeks in the online event room in Moodle. Snippits from the live programme have already been posted here, so that those who were unable to attend the day of the lectures live can also listen to the content.
