Talk Lehre: Dialogue on Teaching
Talk Lehre 2021 - The Future of Teaching
As in the previous year, Talk Lehre 2021 will be held under special conditions: the eleventh edition of the conference format will be held online on November 18, 2021, from 1 to 6 pm. The main topic will be how teaching will change after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic has greatly changed everyday university life and has created new framework conditions, including in the arena of teaching and learning. For the future design of teaching and learning, central questions need to be answered, such as "What have we learned from the Coronavirus pandemic?" What will change in the future? What is our new mission statement for teaching and learning?"
We are pleased to have J. Philipp Schmidt, who is Director of Digital Learning and Collaboration at the MIT Media Lab and an internationally renowned expert on topics such as digital learning and organizational change, as our guest speaker. In addition, as in previous years, the conference will present selected projects and best-practice examples from teaching and learning at RWTH.
In addition, two awards will be presented to RWTH faculty at the Talk Lehre event: the RWTH Teaching Award, which recognizes excellence and innovation in teaching, and the RWTH Lecturer title, which honors non-professorial members of academic staff who stand out for their outstanding teaching and research.
RWTH’s Vice-Rector for Teaching and Learning, Professor Aloys Krieg, will conclude the event with his keynote speech, providing an outlook on future perspectives for teaching at RWTH. How do we want to teach and learn in the future? What are the new options for designing university teaching? What challenges lied ahead for universities? Talk Lehre will offer ample opportunity for participants to ask questions, discuss, and exchange ideas.
Registration will be open soon, and a conference program will be available in due course from this web page.
History of Talk Lehre
Talk Lehre was initiated in 2011 at the request of teachers and student representatives. The annual event informs teachers in particular, but also students and other interested university members, about the implementation of the Excellent Teaching institutional strategy. It also enables dialogue about teaching-related topics on a larger platform.
Diverse Topics
The Talk Lehre event has now taken place ten times with up to 200 participants on each occasion. The topic of focus changes every year. The Excellent Teaching contest of the Stifterverband für die deutsche Wissenschaft was the focus in the first year. In 2012, the conversation revolved around new teaching and learning media, while the following year looked at the topic of the beginning of studies, that is the transition from school to university, and qualification in teaching. Blended Learning was the key topic in 2014, while in 2015, the discussion was centered around the topics of quality management as well as digitalization in teaching and learning. In 2017, the event looked at the digitalization of teaching, while in 2019, it focused on the internationalization of teaching for the first time. Finally, in 2020, the event focused on the coronavirus crisis and the digitalization of teaching and learning was fittingly selected as a key topic once again.