From Wednesday, July 17 to Friday, July 19, 2024, Hof University of Applied Sciences welcomed the entire team of Teaching Lab³ to its Hof campus. The program, which is funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts and the Bavarian Business Association (vbw), is initiated by the Research and Innovation Laboratory for Digital Teaching (FIDL) in close cooperation with the Bavarian Center for Innovative Teaching (BayZiel). The focus of the program, which was launched in March 2024, is this time on “Learning innovations in STEM subjects”.
The Teaching Lab³ consists of annually changing teams from different Bavarian universities – this year there are a total of six teams including the Hof team. In each team, one person from the group of students, professorial staff and teaching experts from the individual universities work together on a topic or project that the team chooses itself. And it is precisely this approach that makes the program so innovative: teachers and students sit around a table together and develop new concepts for individual modules, seminars or even lectures from their different perspectives. In this way, students’ suggestions and ideas for improving teaching can be incorporated at a very early stage or into the work and development process, so that in the end a teaching concept is created that contributes to good learning success for students and greater motivation to learn.
The team at Hof University of Applied Sciences consists of Prof. Dr. Katharina Neumann, who is responsible for the teaching area Fundamentals of Natural Sciences in Engineering and Technical Project Management at the Faculty of Engineering, Anke Kaluza (staff member and didactics expert) and Denise Bohrisch (student). In addition to Hof University of Applied Sciences, Aschaffenburg University of Applied Sciences, Coburg University of Applied Sciences, Munich University of Applied Sciences, Nuremberg Georg Simon Ohm University of Applied Sciences and Rosenheim University of Applied Sciences are also involved in Teaching Lab³ this year.
Teaching concept of the Hof team
Since the winter semester 2022/2023, Hof University of Applied Sciences has been offering the modular Bachelor’s degree course in Engineering Sciences (B.Eng.), which is unique in Germany.
After a two-semester joint orientation phase, students can choose and specialize from the various fields of mechanical, electrical, materials and environmental engineering and industrial engineering.
As part of the Teaching Lab³, the Hof team – student Denise Bohrisch, didactics expert Anke Kaluza and professor Katharina Neumann – is developing an adapted teaching concept for the chemistry and environmental engineering module offered in the second semester. The modular course structure means that students with a pure interest in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering or industrial engineering also take the chemistry and environmental engineering module, which was not provided for in the previous curricula. It is therefore necessary, especially for these students, to convey an understanding of the benefits of chemical knowledge for the later specialization and the professional field. Another challenge is that less prior knowledge requires more commitment on the part of the students and they face greater hurdles. This can have a negative impact on motivation.
The prior experience and knowledge of the participants is very heterogeneous, not only in the theoretical area, but also in practical work in the laboratory. The practicals associated with the lecture are carried out in groups and start at different times during the semester, as 60-70 students have to complete the practicals.
As a result, the different levels of knowledge of the students at the beginning of the practicals have not yet been balanced out by the lecture content. This and the sometimes low motivation for the basics of chemistry pose a challenge for the transfer of knowledge in traditional lectures with laboratory practicals. The new approaches developed as part of the teaching laboratory3 are intended to help solve these challenges.
Third attendance phase at the Hof campus
In addition to the online exchange, the cross-university team met three times in person at the universities before the final presentation. The third face-to-face phase took place between July 17 and 19 at Hof University of Applied Sciences. During these events, the university teams met in person, presented their interim results, received feedback and tried out new approaches directly. The focus of the three days in Hof was on preparing the publication.
Impressions of the Teaching Lab³
Final presentation in October 2024 in Nuremberg
The final results of the participating teams will be presented at the final event in Nuremberg in October and prepared and published in a publication.
Further information on Teaching Lab³ is available online at https://fidl.education/projekte-programme/lehrlabor/
3 questions for the team and Prof. Dr. Katharina Neumann about Teaching Lab³:
How did your participation in Teaching Lab³ come about?
I was made aware of the Teaching Lab³ by my colleague Anke Kaluza, who has been working on innovative teaching concepts at Hof University of Applied Sciences for some time. After a joint exchange, the goal of improving teaching in STEM subjects and, above all, increasing students’ enthusiasm for learning was immediately identified. With Denise Bohrisch, we have completed the team with a committed student.
Please briefly describe the idea behind Teaching Lab³!
For many students, the basic subjects such as mathematics, chemistry or statistics are just a tiresome evil that they have to pass in the first semesters. The benefits for their later studies and careers are usually not apparent here. The idea of the Teaching Lab³ project is therefore to increase motivation for learning through innovative knowledge transfer and thus improve learning success. Of course, the process does not end with the completion of the Teaching Lab³ project. The attendance phases with the other universities have contributed to an intensive examination of the new concept, which has generated many further ideas and areas for optimization.
What is the current status of the project and the development of the teaching concept in Hof?
We are currently in the final phase of the project and are working on publishing the findings. We have already been able to test some adjustments to the teaching concept with the students this semester and we are currently also working on the evaluation of this first test run. Many thanks at this point to the students of this year’s second semester of the Bachelor’s degree course in Engineering Sciences, who have worked very well in testing the new concepts and have provided many valuable tips and suggestions for improvement.
Thank you very much for the interview!
