Innovative teaching methods

Our aspiration in teaching? Our students should develop their analytical-conceptual skills, their critical judgment and their social competence. In our courses, we therefore try to stimulate interaction and discussion between teachers and students, in addition to knowledge transfer.

Our challenge? Traditional didactics can hardly meet this demand in large courses of the bachelor's program, which manifests itself in particular in a lack of interaction and leads to a lack of feedback regarding learning success. In sum, the quality of teaching often suffers.

Our solution? We integrate innovative teaching concepts (electronic voting systems and internet-based quizzes) into the traditional lectures and exercises of our bachelor courses.

What innovative teaching concepts are used and how do they work? Electronic voting systems (EAS) allow anonymous votes on multiple-choice questions to be captured by mobile devices and the result to be displayed in real time in a presentation within the lecture and exercise sessions. Furthermore, the electronic voting devices offer the possibility to ask open questions and send them anonymously to the lecturer. After the events, the questions can be used by the students for exam preparation via an internet-based quiz.

What objectives are being pursued through the use of the innovative teaching concepts?

The use of innovative teaching concepts was awarded the prize of the Foundation Council of the Georg-August-University Göttingen for "Outstanding Commitment in University Teaching" in 2014.

The project was also funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in 2013 and 2014 as part of the Göttingen Campus Q+ project.