Teaching award winners 2018
With 21 nominations, the 2018 call for proposals generated a strong interest and was met with a similar response as previous years’.
From among the 21 nominations, nine nominations could be attributed to the general teaching award and 12 nominations to the thematic priority area ‘Cross-border forms of teaching”.
The award for the best course concept goes to Daniel Löffelmann for the seminar ‘Rousseaus Émile’.
It honours a course that outstandingly succeeded in combining the content of a traditional seminar with an introduction to scientific work. Here, the particular challenge was to find a suitable degree of guidance and supportive guidelines on the one hand and to encourage the students' own initiative on the other, all against the background of a basic course at the beginning of the study programme. Mr Löffelmann solved this through clearly worded assignments, which in their conception require independent performance by the students. In the course of the seminar, the students thus complete numerous writing tasks that specifically promote academic writing. Since the writing assignments gradually lead to a term paper from the middle of the semester onwards, the potential of this form of examination can be exploited in an excellent way.
The award in the thematic priority area ‘Cross-border forms of teaching’ goes to Dr Jacob Eder and Dr Tobias Freimüller (both formerly at the Institute of History) for the seminar ‘Erinnerungskultur in Israel. Totengedenken, Holocausterinnerung und “deutsche Spuren”’ including an 11-day excursion to Israel.
In the course, the ‘crossing of borders’ was achieved in several ways: In terms of content, the historical examination was intertwined with contemporary intercultural encounters. In addition, borders were crossed in the sense that besides the lecturers, students, too, were involved in the planning of the course. In this way, the programme of the seminar and the route of the excursion were actively shaped by the students. Crossing borders was also achieved through the intercultural exchange with an Israeli student group on site, by breaking down prejudices or revising blanket judgements and developing a deeper understanding of Israeli society (e.g. different opinions on military service and the role of the military).
The students who nominated this course for the teaching award particularly emphasize the high level of commitment of the teachers in the conception and implementation of this course.
Both Teaching Awards were presented on 15 November 2018 during the DIES LEGENDI – Teaching Day in the Rosensäle. In addition to the award ceremony and the presentation of the teaching projects funded by the ALe, the DIES LEGENDI is an annual format for