A guide to independence? — Balancing guidance and openness in teaching.
Two pencils’ shadows forming an upward ladder—a guide to independence?
Image: Adobe Stock
DIES LEGENDI 2020
The DIES LEGEND took place virtually this year on 24 November 2020from 12:00 to 16:00, with more than 100 registered participants. The Teaching Awards 2020 were presented; and once again, we placed the focus on a challenge identified in the Strategy 2025—Teaching: how to promote students’ academic independence. In view of the far-reaching digitalization of teaching in 2020 due to the corona pandemic, we addressed the question of students' independent learning and work—a currently pressing issue. Three workshops approached the topic from different perspectives in a stimulating exchange of experience.
Teaching Award ceremony
With the ceremonial presentation of the teaching awards, we honoured outstanding commitment in university teaching in the usual manner. Dr Stefan Fedtke (Faculty of Economics and Business Administration) received the Teaching Award 2020 for the best course concept for his specialization module ‘Supply Chain Simulation’. Jun.-Prof. Dr David Löwenstein (Faculty of Arts) received the award in the thematic priority area ‘Teaching in large groups (80 students or more)’ for the didactic conceptualization of the module ‘Logik und Argumentationslehre’.
Following the ceremony, both teaching award winners presented their respective teaching concepts and thus provided valuable insight into their academic teaching.
Presentation of teaching projects currently funded at the University of Jena
In addition to outstanding achievements in teaching being honoured, the Dies Legendi 2020 also saw presentations of teaching projects currently funded by the ALe as well as externally funded projects—in 2020 for the first time in the form of a podcast consisting of an overview poster and an audio commentary for each project. Everyone interested in the podcast can find it at the following link:
If you have questions on the projects, please do not hesitate to contact the project leaders by email.
Impulsvideo Dies Legendi 2020
Trigger video for the DIES LEGENDI 2020—Future workshop ‘Indepencence in Learning and Teaching’
Future workshop on ‘Independence in studying and teaching’
Three parallel workshops approached the question ‘A guide to independence?—Balancing guidance and openness in teaching’ from different perspectives, leading to an exchange of experiences and opinions on the one hand and to the development of university-specific ideas for the targeted promotion of students' academic independence on the other hand:
Workshop 1 (in German): Feedback culture—what is good feedback? How to give good feedback? Prof. Dr Timm Wilke, Prof. Dr Holger Cartarius, Dr Elizabeth Watts
Workshop 2 (in German):Independence between over- and under-challenging—teachers’ perspective Prof. Dr Miriam Rose, Prof Dr Mirka Dickel
Workshop 3 (in German):Independence between over- and under-challenging—students’ perspective Laura Sterba, Leonie Kuhn
In a concluding panel discussion, the results from the workshops were compiled and overarching aspects of the topic as well as two questions were discussed: ‘Is there such a thing as too much support with regard to academic independence?’ and ‘Is it possible to establish an error culture among students?’.
