More Blended Learning and Tangible Quality Goals: 2014 Deans of Study Workshop in Simonskall

The deans of study workshop annually takes place in the Eifel... for the fifth time, the deans of study from all nine faculties at RWTH Aachen University came together at the invitation of Professor Aloys Krieg - Vice-Rector for Teaching - and of the Center of Excellence in Academic Teaching, ExAcT, in Simonskall. As is tradition, the workshop on October 29 and 30, 2014, revolved around everything having to do with excellent teaching at RWTH. This time focus was placed on "Quality Management in Teaching" and "Blended Learning in Teaching."

 

At the beginning of the first workshop day, the deans of study from all of the faculties used presentations of their roadmaps to be transparent: What happened this past year to improve teaching? Successes and flops and a visionary idea for the future of teaching were presented. All workshop participants were brought up to date on the topic of blended learning at RWTH through short presentations by Professor Heribert Nacken and Christian Tummel. The next goal was to critically review the faculties' roadmaps and continue and optimize the planned measures with the help of a blended learning perspective.

Afterwards, Professor Aloys Krieg provided a current look at the state of teaching at RWTH. Professor Paul Thomas presented the Center for Creative Writing during the last agenda item before dinner.

On the second day the remains of the past year were revisited and further developed with the quality goals of good teaching - a result of the commitments from Simonskall 2013. This year's workshop in Simonkall should also result in a big idea, emphasized Professor Robert Schmitt. During the intensive discussion period "Making quality goals tangible," which was moderated by Professor Schmitt and Stephan Losse, focus was placed on the solidifying quality goals through tangible criteria.

To the satisfaction of all those involved, another committment was signed: "The Vice-Rector of Teaching, the present deans of study, the student representative, the speaker of academic staff, and the chair of AStA support the result of the Quality Management in Studies and Teaching working group. The developed criteria make the quality goals concrete in accordance with RWTH Aachen's aims and reflect our understanding."

Simonskall 2014 ended with a report on the status of the project "Prüfen und Lernen“, PuL for short, by Dr. Marguerite Franssen.

You can obtain additional information from Dipl. Inform. Christian Tummel and Larissa Köttgen.