Innovation in Teaching

The fundamental question arises in university teaching as to what extent written forms of examination, such as homework, represent an appropriate examination format with the use of ChatGPT (and comparable chatbots) as " tools" in the preparation of seminar papers and theses.

The project "Podcasts as a digital examination format" deals with the opportunities and limitations of an alternative examination method: the conception and production of a podcast sequence on a scientific topic. The aim of the teaching research project is to use podcast (episodes) as an examination format in courses and to examine the progress in competence achieved in this context through accompanying research following the course on the basis of social science approaches (surveys, focus groups). At the end of the project, the results of the teaching research are to be published in a scientific journal and transferred as "good practice" in workshops of the 'Servicestelle LehreLernen' at the University of Jena.

project leader Dr. Nicole Kämpfe and Dr. Susanne Volkmar

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Teachers can no longer be successful as lone warriors in order to cope with the complex everyday school life, but should already acquire cooperative competences as part of their training (KMK, HRK, 2015). The current KMK education report also reveals specific content for which there is a demonstrable gap in university teacher training. One of these is dealing with psychological problems in the school context (e.g. self-injurious behaviour).
The project aims to develop "teaching games" based on simulation games, which enable trainee teachers to design and reflect on concrete, action-oriented solutions to real educational challenges in cooperative collaboration. The teaching game makes it possible to experience effective cooperation in a multi-professional team through a targeted role construction, which supports positive attitudes towards cooperation, among other things. The game character of the method promotes positive emotions and intrinsic forms of motivation and thus a more sustainable learning process.

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Sarah Jäger and Johannes Müller

Image: Rabea Brack

A main seminar is planned that will combine the teaching content of church history and ethics. The aim is to discover ethics in the sense of a narrative ethic in concrete stories of life. In this way, students learn to locate their own ethical decisions historically and to reflect on them critically.
Women theologians from East and West Germany (born between 1940 and 1960) are interviewed digitally or presentationally using oral history methods on ethical topics that have shaped their own (ecclesiastical) professional path. For West Germany, Antje Heider-Rottwilm or Christine Busch will be interviewed, for East Germany Kerstin Gommel or Ulrike Auga. In this way, ethical issues of the 1980s and 1990s such as nuclear energy, the environment, peace, feminism and equal rights, homosexuality, etc. can be addressed. In the next step, small films will be made of the interviews and supplemented with ethical analyses, which will then be published on their own homepage.

project leader Prof. Dr. Jonas Sauer

Image: Jürgen Scheere (University of Jena)

At the Institute of Mathematics, there are already very good additional offers for students in the first semesters, such as the Maths Café. The planned combined seminar / podcast concept "Literature Review" is aimed at advanced students with an interest in mathematical research. The podcast will provide insight into the various existing works in a particular subject area of mathematical analysis and at the same time shed light on the international networks of people that are not easy for students to see.

Students in special lectures often find themselves in the situation of wanting more orientation in the existing literature. The "Literature review" proactively counters this circumstance and provides students with a guide to draw on a broader horizon of knowledge both in the selection and in the preparation of their theses. Ideally, by the end of the module, the participant would have developed a research question for their thesis.

Project leader: Prof. Dr Jutta Hübner

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Digital health literacy has been on everyone's lips at least since the Covid pandemic and is at the same time a prime example of the necessity of interprofessional teaching. After all, hardly any other topic affects so many health professions equally. However, there are nearly no courses that address the topic interprofessionally and convey the knowledge to our students in a practical way. We would like to offer the inter-faculty seminar "eHealth Literacy" in order to close this gap and to do justice to the current changes in the health system in teaching. Students from different disciplines will prepare for guided discussion and exchange of perspectives on various aspects of eHealth interventions because of specially created teaching videos and selected publications. The course concludes with an overarching practical project with complex case studies in study-discipline heterogeneous groups.

project leader: Laura Sophia Sterba

Image: Manuel Glatter

The project enables students of the psychology bachelor's degree to learn about, apply and critically reflect on intervention techniques in emergency psychology. Groups of students develop emergency-specific interventions for dealing with those affected after teaching basic emergency psychology skills. Using the methodology of forum theatre according to Augusto Boal, an intensive application and reflection of these interventions takes place in the seminar sessions. The individual student working groups portray together with professional actors the various emergency situations in which they themselves act as emergency psychologists and the actors take on the role of those affected. Together in the plenary, there is critical reflection and processing of the procedure until a satisfactory course of action has been worked out.

project leader: Prof. Dr. Ilona Croy and Dr. Marcel Franz with team Fabian Rottstädt and Carina Heller

Image: Antonie Bierling

The direct study programme Master Psychology with a focus on clinical psychology and psychotherapy has been implemented with the entry into force of the legal reform on psychotherapist training, as of September 2020. This enables students to become psychotherapists. The degree programme will also be offered at the FSU in the winter semester 2023/24. For academic teaching, this means that in addition to the receptive imparting of knowledge, learning and testing spaces must be implemented in which future psychotherapists learn key competences relevant to their profession. For this purpose, we would like to use the teaching-learning form of problem-oriented learning (POL), which is already very well established and evaluated in the teaching of human medicine for somatic clinical pictures. Problem-solving skills are acquired by working on practice-relevant questions, and teamwork and self-directed learning are promoted in small groups. We would like to adapt this concept, extend it to mental illnesses and integrate it into the seminars on clinical psychology. To this end, we plan to develop suitable working materials for analogue and digital formats and then test and evaluate them within seminars.

Project leaders: Prof. Dr Marie von Lilienfeld-Toal and her team

Image: Prof. Dr. Marie von Lilienfeld-Toal

The innovative and interdisciplinary teaching project "If you want to treat me, you have to know who I am" is aimed at medical students in the clinical semesters and imparts
basic knowledge and skills about diversity in medicine and (structural) discrimination, as well as critical awareness of it. The idea of intersectionality is central to the teaching concept. Students learn medical and sociological knowledge as well as an awareness of the patients' perspectives in the interdisciplinary seminar and workshop series. In addition, the interactive seminars serve to identify the deficits of medical curricula in a research-oriented way. These can be addressed in later teaching and research practice.

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Project leader: Prof. Dr Alexander Brenning

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Data science methods of geoinformatics and statistics are key competences that have a special significance in the Geography programme of Jena. Their teaching is primarily aimed at application and critical interpretation of results. A frequently requested adaptation by students is the provision of diverse application scenarios with reference to different subject interests and professional fields.

We met this challenge with innovative programming techniques. With the respective learning objectives in mind, exercise task schemes were developed, which are automatically processed from a task collection into interactive online tasks with the help of the programming language R, which are finally integrated into the learning platform Moodle. Furthermore interactive, browser-based Shiny apps were developed in R, which serve to teach more demanding geoinformatics methods such as spatial interpolation. The online exercises are regularly used in several modules in the geography courses, and the interactive apps developed are now being successively integrated into the teaching.

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Project leader: Dr Roderich Kirchner

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

This project served to develop or further develop specialised learning software and to provide vocabulary learning cards for the ancient languages. The Latin and Greek courses at the FSU require intensive learning. Central to this is the learning of vocabulary and the repetitive training of the acquired vocabulary. The teaching material is usually tailored to the courses; therefore, there are no offers from commercial education providers. Within the framework of the project, digitally available data sets on Latin and Greek vocabulary, root forms and idioms were processed and implemented in the software.

Project leaders: Prof. Dr Ulrich S. Schubert and Prof. Dr Timm Wilke

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Central elements of digitalisation were integrated into the chemistry degree programme in a new course offering, initially designed for training at Master's level. For this purpose, a module was developed that teaches students the content of programming, databases and artificial intelligence. In the associated seminar, they apply the knowledge they have acquired and develop their own programmes for practical chemical problems in the area of measurement data acquisition, visualisation and evaluation.

The project-oriented character opens up spaces for the development of own systems with which questions from one's own area of interest can be addressed. The best results can then be transferred to final theses or, if necessary, to other courses. The transferability of the seminar concept to other degree programmes with practical laboratory courses is foreseeable.

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Project leaders: Clemens Hoffmann, Elizabeth M. Watts and Julia E. Fleischmann

Image: Privat

Project leader: Dr Elizabeth Watts

Heterogeneity in classes is on the rise and so teaching must be increasingly differentiated so that different competences can be realised. Digitisation offers teachers the possibility to differentiate their lessons more easily. Therefore, it is necessary to develop adequate teaching training that prepares future teachers not only to teach digitally, but also to teach differentiated. The course "From Digitisation to Differentiation" has contributed to filling this gap in education, whereby student teachers were not only able to get to know new digital approaches better, but were also given concrete examples of how they could use such digital media for differentiation in the classroom. The course was attended by all student teachers of science subjects, and subsequently also by student teachers of special needs education in cooperation with the School of Education in Erfurt.

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Project leader: Prof. Dr Stefanie Gräfe

Image: Jan-Peter Kasper (University of Jena)

The Corona crisis has released a strong digitization push in university teaching. The goal is to focus on digital education, the development and implementation of modern educational concepts to integrate them into the everyday life of science teaching. We have decided together with the MPSP to create a learning app for digitizing the learning content of Physical Chemistry with a constantly growing of learning ideas, good-practice examples, videos and digital learning environments. Modern technical approaches visualization were used to support students in training their spatial imagination, to develop a 3D image of the molecules and thus a better understanding in the context of this project. Two different approaches were used: (1) the (inter)active "Experiencing" the 3D environment through virtual reality (VR). (2) The "touching" of larger molecules and systems through plastic molds created via a 3D printer. We decided on short notice to replace the haptic component (2) or to consider it temporally downstream due to the pandemic-related changeover to hybrid teaching formats. Instead of that, we focused primarily on spatial imagination via augmented reality (AR) via the aforementioned app on mobile devices mentioned above.

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Project leaders: Prof. Dr Holger Cartarius and Phlipp Scheiger

Image: Links: Anne Günther, Rechts: Ronny Nawrodt

The fundamental concepts of theoretical physics are undoubtedly important for physics teacher training. They help future teachers to gain sufficient technical sovereignty to be able to concentrate on teaching in everyday school life. However, the associated courses are perceived as difficult by the students and their relevance for later teaching is often not perceived. Thus, there is a danger that a great potential of the study programme is not used. In this teaching innovation, the theoretical physics courses were supplemented by combined subject-specific didactic seminars in such a way,
so that their profession-oriented use for the teaching profession is worked out and the link to school physics is recognisable. Accompanying seminars were developed, which can be firmly transferred into the modules of theoretical physics through a parallel initiative of the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy.

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Project leader: Dr Marion Schmidt-Wenzel

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

The ""Propaedeutic for the examination review in civil & public law" is intended to facilitate the students an introduction to the one-year university exam preparation. The six-week course took place prior to the Corona pandemic on a 16-hour weekly basis as a purely face-to-face course beginning in September. However, due to the timing, it was not possible for all students in the target group to attend the course.
Within the framework of the funding from the Academy for Teaching Development, the
questions and exam notes, as well as the learning techniques, were implemented digitally.
Now, the learning material is also supplemented and supported with digital formats. Among other things, learning level tests as well as teaching and learning videos are used. This should enable students to organize their self-learning time efficiently and individually.
Due to the fundamental approach, the videos can not only be repeated in the upcoming
not only repeatedly in the upcoming courses of the propaedeutic course, but also in other
exam preparation.

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Project leaders: Prof. Volker Woest and Clemens Hoffmann

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

As part of the ProfJL project (Professionalization from the Start in the Jena Model of Teacher Education), a teaching-learning programme was developed for student teachers of biology, chemistry and physics, which is intended to prepare students for interdisciplinary science teaching in a way that is both school-relevant and practice-oriented. With the help of funding from the Academy for Teacher Development, the teaching-learning programme will be continued and the links between the individual subject didactic training areas strengthened. In this way, the contents are to be anchored in the long term as important components of the science teacher-training programme. One approach to this would be the implementation of the teaching-learning offer as a separate module in the required elective area. A pool of materials consisting of practical examples, methods, and opportunities for reflection serves as a basis for this and will be further expanded.

Here [pdf, 981 kb] deExternal link you can find the final project report (URZ login credentials required).

Project leaders: Prof. Dr Perkams and Tim Haubenreißer

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

A large and significant part of basic philosophical texts is in Latin. For a research-oriented study of philosophy, knowledge of this language is therefore indispensable in order to find meaningful access to these original texts, to examine the quality of the translations, to understand them as the product of hermeneutic processes, but also to be able to critically and analytically process texts in the first place. Although Latin teaching has the potential to teach philosophical topics and working methods in a targeted way and thus to create more popularity for itself, at the University of Jena and elsewhere, the focus is mainly on practising grammar and vocabulary without reference to the subject. In order to address this situation, a course- and competence-related Latin course will be taught from the summer semester 2019 to the winter semester 2019/20 in the seminar ‘Latin for Philosophers: Texts, Discussions, Perspectives’. The innovative project is also intended to serve as a platform for students to contribute their ideas and, in the medium term, aims to make a corresponding teaching offer permanent, which should be a model for other languages and degree programmes and an advantage for the University of Jena.

Here [pdf, 3 mb] deExternal link you can find the final project report (URZ login credentials required).

Project leaders: Sabine Stück, apl. Prof. Frank Schmidl and apl. Prof. Katharina Schreyer

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

As part of the restructuring of medical studies ‘Masterplan Medizinstudium 2020’, preclinical training will also face increased demands that require a reorientation in teaching. Therefore, we planned to transfer the physics practical course for medical students from a pure practical course to a new form of practical course consisting of a coordinated mixture of interactive co-seminars and subsequent independent experiments.
The novel combination of co-seminars, as a quasi-interactive lecture with combined practical exercises by the students, preceded by the actual practical course, is intended to ensure a more optimal training of all students in directly comparable areas identified as important for further medical studies. In addition to deepening and consolidating the subject-specific foundations for the subsequent teaching sections in the preclinical phase (especially physiology), the prerequisites for possible later clinical research were also to be created.

Here [pdf, 2 mb] deExternal link you can find the final project report (URZ login credentials required).

Project leader: Prof. Dr Ruhland and Frau Berger

Image: privat

Database systems are of central importance in the research and teaching field of business informatics. It has been known for years that the heterogeneity of the prior knowledge of the participants in the Master's programmes requires the delivery of bridging courses. A blended learning concept allows efficient use of the university's own personnel capacities and Internet offerings.  Expanding this with elements of gamification not only promises to keep interest high in general, but also makes those learning elements more exciting that are generally considered particularly dry, but are indispensable for in-depth academic discussion. Key competences are developed along the way.

Here [pdf, 457 kb] deExternal link you can find the final project report (URZ login credentials required).

Project leader: Prof. Dr Jürgen Bolten

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

With the aim of linking internationalization and digitization, a virtual intercultural business game was developed within the framework of the project. In future, it can both be a fixed part of the supplementary subjects in the Bachelor’s programme Intercultural Business Communication and be used by other subjects of the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Economics and the Faculty of Behavioural Sciences as well as the Language Centre. The business game uses a virtual classroom, which in turn is integrated into a Moodle platform. Both provide the basis for student teams from three international universities to interact together. The aim was to make it possible to experience challenges of intercultural action ‘live’ and to be able to reflect on corresponding challenges. The project work included the creation of text- and video-based handouts for independent use by lecturers.

Here [pdf, 772 kb] deExternal link you can find the final project report (URZ login credentials required).

Project leader: Prof. Dr Jutta Hübner

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Based on the simulation of case conferences, medical students in the 9th subject-related semester will gain fundamental insights into the development of therapeutic strategies in multimodal therapies, the interaction of different disciplines and professional groups, and interdisciplinary and multiprofessional communication. The focus was on understanding complex therapy processes, taking into account the therapy goal, communicating about this with the patient and supporting informed decision-making. In 6 seminars, 6 selected tumour types and different therapy situations (initial diagnosis to palliative situation) were discussed.

In the course of the semester, interim evaluations serve to adjust the concept if necessary. The results of the final evaluation and experiences are to be scientifically published and presented. The project result in the creation of a sustainable concept for student teaching that can be transferred to other subjects.

Here [pdf, 661 kb] deExternal link you can find the final project report (URZ login credentials required).

Project leaders: Jun. Prof. Dr David Löwenstein and Dr Peggy Hetmank-Breitenstein

Image: Anne Günther (University of Jena)

Analysing and evaluating as well as developing arguments on one's own is not only a philosophical core competence, but also essential in other fields both inside and outside the university. The subject of philosophy has a special responsibility to promote the development of these competences. Yet an integrative didactics of philosophical argumentation, which aims to combine both analytical and logical as well as productive-creative argumentation skills, has remained a desideratum to this day. With our project, we wanted to systematically teach and further develop the teaching of formal logic, which is often completely disconnected from actual argumentation, and the didactics of writing, which is uninformed by logical argument analyses. Our aim was to provide training in persuasive argumentation in which logical acuity and successful text composition are intertwined.

Here [pdf, 274 kb] deExternal link you can find the final project report (URZ login credentials required).