Three Fellowships for RWTH Instructors

Once again, the NRW Ministry of Science and Research and Stifterverband, provides Fellowships for Innovation in Digital Teaching & Learning at universities.

 

This time, they are providing 43 university instructors with funding to introduce and implement digital teaching and learning methods. Three instructors from RWTH Aachen were among those to receive the funding. The total funding volume amounts to two million euros per year, with each fellow receiving up to 50,000 euros to implement their concepts. Below are the RWTH Aachen recipients:

Dr. med. Sophia Schmitz, General, Visceral and Transplant Surgery at Uniklinik RWTH Aachen

"INVOLVES – Interactive, video-based surgery courses using the sandwich principle in the field of general, visceral and transplant surgery"

In order to grasp the complexities of an academic/hands-on subject, such as general, visceral and transplant surgery, it is essential for students to be able to follow and comprehend operations step by step. In a lecture, all the fundamentals are explained and the different substeps are specified. INVOLVES, the interactive, video-based surgery course that uses the so-called sandwich principle goes even further. Video sequences of operations are stopped at predefined points for comprehension questions. The instructors thus have an opportunity, via audience-response-system (ARS), to gain insight into the students' level of knowledge as the lecture progresses and to clear up any confusion right there and then. The videos are also added to an interactive online teaching and learning platform. Bringing the flipped classroom concept to medical education in this manner, allows students to be well-prepared for their clerkships in surgery, particularly because students are always assigned to a surgery the night before.

Dr. Andreas Maurischat, Faculty of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Natural Sciences

"Development of an adaptive exercises system in 'Advanced Mathematics I'"

In Mathematics lectures, students often ask for special exercises to help them learn for exams in a targeted manner. Typically, they are then directed towards large sets of exercises, but the students tend to lose track of which exercises are relevant and their learning thus becomes very inefficient. The planned innovation of an adaptive exercises system on RWTH's e-learning platform "Dynexite" addresses this problem head-on by offering a large internal pool of exercises. This pool, however, is not just presented to the students as a whole, but the system is instead programmed to suggest only those exercises to the students that are helpful to them based on their existing knowledge and competence level.

Syrina Beierle M.Sc., Chair of Management Accounting

"Competency-based e-tests in the field of accounting"

Accounting is a fundamental and socially very relevant area of business administration. This is why the chair of management accounting is working in collaboration with the RWTH institution "Media for Learning" to develop an online-based application to build and support students' subject-specific competencies in this particular field.

First, exactly those subject-specific competencies will be defined that the students need to have in order to successfully complete the required accounting courses. Based on the performance of students in their solving of online exercises that are part of specific learning untis in accounting, typical mistakes are recognized and individually analyzed. In this way, student deficits in particular subject-related skills can be easily identified. Subsequent learning units are then programmed to offer online-exercises that target these specific skills. The overall aim is to build subject-related skills with the help of an individualized, online-based learning tool.

Source: Press and Communications