DIES LEGENDI – Teaching Day
"Create and celebrate change: Future skills, innovation, and transfer in tomorrow's teaching"
Students and teaching staff sit in front of the university, look at a globe projection and celebrate shaping the future.
Ideas and discussion on the topic of “Future Skills”
The event kicked off with keynote speeches by Prof. Dr. Martin Ammon (teaching perspective), Jesko Zagatowski (student perspective), and Konstanze Olschewski (business perspective), which were followed by lively discussions. The presentations focused primarily on the question of which future skills are particularly relevant – technological and digital skills (e.g., data analytics & AI, digital literacy, agile working) or classic and transformative skills (e.g., problem-solving skills, creativity, resilience, judgment, dialogue and conflict management skills).
All speakers emphasized the relevance of “classic” skills or life skills as a basis for dealing with social or technical challenges that are accompanied by high pressure to transform. A live survey among participants yielded similar findings: skills such as communication and judgment were cited far more frequently as important “future skills” than, for example, “digital skills.”
Mentimeter word cloud on the topic of future skills (german)
Image: Dr. Katja HüfnerPresentation of the project “Universitas@Jena: Shaping the future together”
Prof. Dr. Karina Weichold presented the new large-scale project in the field of teaching, which has received €6.15 million in funding and will run for a maximum of six years. As part of the “Teaching Architecture” call for proposals by the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education, the University of Jena was able to secure funding for a project aimed at adapting university teaching to current challenges in order to enable students to develop innovative approaches to shaping social transformations.
Based on the architecture-related terminology of the call for proposals, the project will create three so-called “imaginary teaching/learning spaces” that will serve as conceptual areas for the work packages. There are a total of eight work packages, each pursuing its own set of questions, but working together towards the university's overarching goal of promoting future skills, interdisciplinarity, and participation.
These eight work packages were presented in a poster session. Afterwards, there was an opportunity to talk to the project managers during the lunch break. The individual posters for the work packages can be found under Downloads.
Overview of work packages in the Universitas@Jena project
Image: Dr. Katja HüfnerWorld-Café
The exchange of ideas continued in a World Café with three themed rooms. In the “Future Skills” themed room, participants picked up on the discussion from the large plenary session and focused in particular on the question of what conditions and structures are necessary to effectively teach future skills. In the “Participation and Innovation” themed room, the focus was on the prerequisites that need to be created for joint teaching development and the structures that could support this. The “Transfer” themed room offered the opportunity to exchange ideas on specific formats – including the transfer of scientific knowledge to society or the transfer of social problems to teaching – and to discuss obstacles and opportunities for implementation.
The results of the World Cafés are documented in this PadletExternal link and are open for additions, even from people who did not participate in Dies Legendi. Until December 19, 2025, further ideas on the topics of “Future Skills,” “Participation and Innovation,” and “Transfer” can be contributed, which will be incorporated into the concretization of the project measures.
Teaching awards ceremony
At the end of Dies Legendi, two outstanding examples of excellent teaching were honored. This year's teaching award for the best course design was presented to Dr. Antje Rauers. The psychologist was honored for her block seminar “Out of the box: Developing an intervention to reduce negative age stereotypes.”
University of Jena Teaching Award for “Best Course Design” (german)
Graphic: FreepikThematic teaching award from the University of Jena for Dr. Manuel Quaschner (german)
Graphic: FreepikThe 2025 Teaching Award for a specific subject area went to mathematician Dr. Manuel Quaschner. His teaching concept “Linear Algebra I” impressed the expert panel of the Academy for Teaching Development in this year's focus area “Teaching and learning culture in the age of AI.” Both Teaching Award winners were nominated by students this year. The award-winning concepts were presented for the first time in videos in which the award winners and their students reported on the award-winning courses.
- AP1_Poster_PartizipationsraumLehrstrategie_Universitaspdf, 3 mb · de
- AP2_Poster_FörderprogrammStudentischeLehre_Universitaspdf, 3 mb · de
- AP3_Poster_Flex-Space-Lehre_Universitaspdf, 4 mb · de
- AP4_Poster_ForumFuturum#Lehre_Universitaspdf, 4 mb · de
- AP5_Poster_FlexiblisierungBachelorstudiengang_Universitaspdf, 2 mb · de
- AP6_Poster_LaborInterdisziplinarium_Universitaspdf, 2 mb · de
- AP7_Poster_ForumGenerale_Universitaspdf, 1 mb · de
- AP8_Poster_FSUConnectPlattform_Universitaspdf, 2 mb · de
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Graphic: pathdoc/AdobeStock DIES LEGENDI - Teaching Day 2024Let's communicate! Discourse culture in courses
