Ten lecturers are honoured for outstanding courses in music, education, philosophy and medicine.
Ten university lecturers will receive the Teaching Prize for the 2019/20 academic year for their achievements in university teaching. Under the patronage of the Vice President for Studies, Teaching and International Affairs, Prof. Dr Verena Pietzner, courses in music, education, philosophy and medicine will be honoured. The winners will each receive 1,000 euros for their teaching.
With the Teaching Prize, the University of Oldenburg recognises outstanding university teaching and aims to contribute to the debate on teaching and learning processes at the university. "Especially in the current situation, it is important to make particularly successful courses visible. That way we can learn from each other," emphasises Pietzner.
Award-winning teaching - from ophthalmology to ensemble conducting
The prize in the "Best Course" category goes to Prof Dr Dr Stefan Schrader, Dr Sonja Mertsch, Tobias Batram, Jan Liewig, Guido Esper, Dr Thomas Lischka and Dr med Marten Walker from the Department for Human Medicine. In the "Basic Ophthalmic Microsurgery Course", they combined theory and practice, for example by showing original images of operations and carrying out exercises on animal specimens. The jury recognised the fact that the lecturers designed the course in a didactically sophisticated and elaborate manner and supervised the students intensively.
Musician Heidi Bayer moved her course "Ensemble Conducting: Popular Music II" completely into the virtual world and received an award for her didactic concept in the "Digitalisation in University Teaching" category. She made self-produced videos available to the students, enabling them to acquire knowledge individually. She also instructed the course participants to create their own conducting videos and reflect on themselves in the process. According to the jury, this was a successful implementation of a practice-orientated event in an online format.
Lena Haug from the Institute of Educational Sciences used an innovative method to prepare her students for their own research work in the course "Researching with (children's) drawings". She received the teaching prize in the "Research-based learning" category for this. Haug instructed the students to analyse an existing data set of children's drawings based on their own questions. The students then presented their results in scientific posters and research reports. The jury emphasised that Haug had illustrated the relevance of research in the school context.
"Philosophising with Star Trek" was convincing
Every year, students at the University of Oldenburg are invited to nominate outstanding courses for the Teaching Prize. A jury consisting of lecturers and students selects the award winners from the nominations received.
Lecturers were able to submit the results of their own course evaluation for the "Best Course Evaluation" award. Anna Plader from the Institute of Philosophy came out on top with her seminar "Philosophising with Star Trek".
The University of Oldenburg has been honouring outstanding achievements by university lecturers since 1998. The 2019/20 Teaching Prize is sponsored by the Oldenburg University Society (UGO).