Teaching Formats

The lecture is the most frequently used teaching format at German universities and has formed the core of university teaching for decades. And although this format – especially the form of frontal teaching often equated with it – is not without problems from the perspective of modern teaching and learning research, the lecture also has unique strengths that continue to make it indispensable for everyday university life.

One of the strengths of a lecture is that, on the one hand, you can reach a large number of students at the same time; on the other hand, you can introduce them to the systematics of a subject area and provide an overview of the relevant topics. In addition, the lecture often acts as a rhythmizing and disciplining element in the student's daily routine and, as a meeting platform, strengthens the social group structure among the students. One of the weaknesses of this format is that it encourages a non-committal consumer attitude on the part of the audience. This is due in particular to the fact that students are difficult to involve and activate personally during the lecture. The size of the auditorium and factors such as different prior knowledge and heterogeneity make it even more difficult to turn the situation around in a positive way.

Even though in the perception of the lecturer giving a lecture often takes up a lot of space, it is by no means self-evident that it is the same for the students. On the contrary, a significant amount of student learning often takes place outside of the lecture, essentially driven by slide handouts and anticipated exam questions. For this reason, university didactics strives to provide teaching staff with methods for activating students more strongly during lecture attendance time, as well as providing stronger and more deliberate impetus for the self-learning phases outside of the lecture.

Tips:

• Create real added value in your lecture compared to alternative learning materials such as lecture notes or books: enrich the material with examples, clarify it with practical cases, address typical mistakes and misconceptions, set focal points, help students distinguish what are important core elements, explanatory examples, introductions or digressions.
• Time and again you will have content that can be learned just as well from books. Dare to outsource this content from the lecture! But make this outsourcing transparent, refer to corresponding book chapters that are to be worked on in self-learning phases, and use the time gained for explanations and examples that offer real added value to the book.
• Try to encourage students to actively think along with you; all too often we experience that students do not think along in lectures, but merely collect the learning material for later in order to study shortly before the exam. Dealing with the material there first often leads to bulimic learning: the knowledge is quickly crammed and can then usually be recalled in the exam, but is not sustainably internalized and quickly evaporates again.
• In many cases, it is a good idea to supplement a lecture with exercises. If students apply the lecture material in the exercises, the risk that the lecture material remains inert knowledge and cannot be translated into action is reduced.

No two seminars are alike. The objectives can differ just as much as the content and the methods selected. However, most seminars have a few aspects in common: Depending on the respective subject area, they serve to deepen content, to present special topics in a targeted manner, or to elaborate and test theoretical content in practice.

As a teacher, you have a great deal of leeway in the design of seminars. In the Recommendations for Assuring the Quality of Studies and Teaching in Bachelor's and Master's Programs of the German Rectors' Conference (June 2005), seminars are described as "small courses with significant but varying degrees of participant activity"; the group size is usually between 15 and 30 participants.

The spectrum of formats offered ranges

• from the classical seminar (in which students e.g. present solutions to tasks or give presentations on their own or other people's work),
• via the learning workshop or a project seminar (here the participants take over a large part of the active design, e.g. the design of entire units),
• to teaching-research projects or action learning (here the participants work out whole topics in small groups in a highly self-organized way and reflect on the process and the results on their own responsibility). The reading course also finds its place in the field of seminars.

A major advantage of seminars is that they encourage students to take responsibility for their own work and lead them to independent scientific work or practical application of what they have learned. Work is usually done in groups, which requires students to acquire social skills in addition to learning and consolidating subject knowledge. A possible disadvantage, however, is the sometimes high level of organization and supervision required. The role of the teacher changes from knowledge mediator to learning companion and facilitator and is thus different from that of a lecture, for example. In addition, the interaction between learners and lecturers is much more intensive and should be used to improve the learning success of the students.

Tips:

• Before the start of the seminar, reflect on the role you want to play as a teacher and how you will make this attitude clear to the students. In seminars, the teaching staff leads the group throughout the individual sessions, they steer, distribute tasks and correct, but are little or not involved in preparing the content and communicating it. The instructor is more of a moderator, companion and quality assurance of the learning process.
• It is precisely the transparency of the requirements and the assurance of the quality of student work that are enormously important; they should be clearly communicated and tracked from the very beginning.
• The students' prior knowledge and competencies or level of development should be taken into account during planning to ensure the smooth running of the seminar. There are also various methods for assessing the participants' level of knowledge and ability to organize themselves during the first seminar.
• There are many ways to make seminars varied and exciting: For example, smaller research projects can be carried out or videos can be created. Individual seminar dates can also be used well for excursions or visiting guest speakers.
• If you are planning a seminar for the next semester, you can use the events of the current semester to attract participants and make participation conditions transparent. In this way, you ensure that participants register in good time and are informed about the requirements.

Web-based teaching and learning can be integrated into teaching in very different ways, depending on the framework conditions, target group, personal vision, and individual teaching style. Three concepts in particular have become established in university teaching: the enrichment concept, the integration concept, and the virtualization concept.

In the enrichment concept, scripts, slides and tasks for preparation and follow-up as well as communication media are provided online to supplement a course, for example. The online offers are optional for the students.

The integration concept, also called blended learning, combines classroom teaching with online teaching. Here, in-person and online phases alternate, e.g., in a weekly rhythm, whereby the online offerings are no longer optional for the learners. The design possibilities of blended learning are diverse and are oriented, among other things, to allowing the respective strengths of face-to-face and online teaching to come to bear. For example, knowledge can be imparted in the lecture, and in the subsequent online phase, students work on online assignments. Reflection and feedback on the completion of the online assignments then take place in the subsequent face-to-face session. However, it is also possible for students to acquire the knowledge themselves not in the lecture, but by means of materials provided online. Application, practice and discussion then take place in the next face-to-face session ("Flipped Classroom") and the follow-up takes place in the subsequent online phase, e.g. by means of an eTest to test knowledge.

The virtualization concept is characterized by the fact that in-person courses are replaced by purely online courses such as self-study courses, video lectures, MOOCs and courses offered by the Virtuelle Hochschule Bayern (vhb). These tend to be the exception at universities where attendance is the rule, but they enable students to access learning content that is not taught at their own university, for example, or that complements it, in a way that is both individual and flexible in terms of time and space.

The longer the online phases last, the more important it is for students to be supported and to exchange information with each other in order to keep motivation high.

Tips:

• Think carefully about which e-learning elements you would like to integrate into your course and to what extent. Ask the staff of the media center for advice - they can explain the advantages and disadvantages of the various elements, draw your attention to suitable elements and estimate the implementation effort for you.
• Introduce the students to the new teaching format step by step and demonstrate the e-learning tools used in order to reduce inhibitions and clarify questions in advance.
• Offer your students alternative forms of communication and cooperation so that they can decide for themselves how to contact and exchange ideas with each other and with you during the online phases. Assign clear tasks to the communication and cooperation media you intend to use in order to motivate students to use them.
• The Moodle learning platform, which is freely available to all members of the TUM, offers "virtual learning spaces" in parallel to learning spaces such as lecture halls, seminar rooms and library rooms, in which online scenarios can be implemented (for example, provision and use of information, materials, communication and exchange possibilities).
• Since the students acquire, apply and practice the knowledge themselves in the online phases, consider in advance which supervision tasks will be involved for you and who from your team will take them on.

The central exercise module is the second link in the chain lecture - central exercise mdoule - tutorial. Here, building on the theoretical knowledge of the lecture, the students should get to know and understand solution methods and solution strategies. They should learn how to use the theoretical knowledge from the lecture to solve concrete tasks. But only if the lecture and the central exercise module are well coordinated, the result is a powerful tool that enables and supports deep learning.

In the central exercise module, the material of the lecture is repeated and operationalized: the focus is now on problem solving. The aspects of the material that are needed to solve the problems are repeated; solution ideas, ways and strategies are presented and tested. In addition, they are familiarized with the relevant formulas and how to use them. The central exercise thus represents another important step towards successfully passing the exam. It is important for the success of the central exercise module that it is coordinated with the lecture. It should not be used to discuss material that was not or only insufficiently covered in the lecture, e.g. due to a lack of time. However, a strict separation of the contents (lecture = theory, central exercise module = practice) is equally undesirable. Also in the lecture it is meaningful to already discuss and talk through tasks. A sensible interlocking of lecture, central exercise module and tutorial is challenging – but worthwhile!

Central exercise modules are often characterized by frontal lectures and input phases: The lecturer briefly repeats the material and presents the solutions to the tasks. This is how the tutorial exercises are prepared, in which students learn to solve tasks themselves. In order to encourage students to think and question, they must also be activated and motivated in the central exercise module. This happens, for example, when tasks relevant to everyday life are worked on, the relevance of the material is made clear and the students are involved with questions or small group work.

Tips:

• Provide meta-information at the beginning of the first central exercise session: Why are central exercise modules important? What is covered in the central exercise module, what is not? What is in store for the participants? This meta-knowledge increases students' willingness to participate.
• Also use exemplary errors and sample solutions to illustrate which solutions are possible and which are not.
• Make material such as exercise sheets and sample solutions available electronically.
• As a lecturer of a central exercise module or a lecture, use the knowledge of your tutors: What problems do students still have with the material in the tutorial? What should you repeat in the central exercise module or lecture?
• Set up online forums (e.g. via Moodle) by means of which students can discuss questions and problems. This way you can see at the same time which questions and problems are of particular concern to the students!
• Consult regularly with the person responsible for the lecture and the tutors: Where are they in the material right now? Have they encountered problems in understanding certain content? Should the central exercise module focus on certain topics?

The tutorial exercise is the last link in the chain lecture - central exercise module – tutorial. Here, the students should learn not only to understand the solution path, but also to be able to solve tasks themselves. And this is exactly the crux: In order to learn this, they have to calculate themselves.

Designing a tutorial demands a lot from tutors: it is difficult to motivate students to pick up the pen and do the math themselves. To give you the tools you need, tutors should be trained for this specific task.

But the tutors have a big plus: they are closer to the students than the other teachers in terms of age, experience and position. This gives them a better understanding of their problems with the assignments and easier access to the students. This is not the only reason why it is hard to imagine curricula without tutorial exercises. For this reason, however, continuous quality control is also important for tutorial exercises. Helpful for this are, for example, the introduction of teaching evaluations and the training of student tutors.

One way to actively involve students is to divide the entire group into subgroups, which then work on tasks together. In this way, students not only learn to solve the tasks themselves, but also to work in teams – and they develop frustration tolerance, because often they do not succeed in solving the tasks at the first attempt.

It is important for the success of the tutorial exercise that it is coordinated with the lecture and central exercise module. Tutorials should not be used to calculate tasks in a frontal manner as in the central exercise sessions. A meaningful dovetailing of lecture, central exercise module and tutorial is challenging, but worthwhile! The tutorial exercise thus represents an important step towards successfully passing the exam.

Tips for lecturers and instructors:

• As the instructor, set rules with your tutors at the beginning of the semester, e.g.: If someone has a question, they should ask the other tutors first, and only if it remains unanswered, they should ask the instructor.
• Set up a weekly meeting, office hour, or forum where tutors can ask and discuss open questions with you or experienced tutors.
• You can assign each student a fixed tutorial or give students the freedom to choose which tutorial they want to go to.

Tips for tutors:

• Provide material such as exercise sheets and sample solutions electronically.
• Communicate clearly at the beginning of the tutorial exercise: What will be covered in the tutorial, what will not. What is in store for the participants.
• Why do they need to do the math themselves? This meta-knowledge increases the students' willingness to participate.

The teaching format practical course is very diverse: the spectrum ranges from the guided laboratory practical course to the largely independently conducted business internship. What all variants have in common is that students have the opportunity to learn and practice practical skills.

Because the range of practical courses is so wide, it is difficult to determine what the perfect practical course should be. For example, not only does the degree to which students can independently complete tasks vary, but also where the practical course takes place, whether internally (within the university) or externally (with an organization). In addition, students have the option of completing a practical course not only domestically, but also abroad. However, it is always important that a practical course gives students a better insight into everyday working life, allows them to try out the knowledge they have acquired theoretically in the practical field, and thus increases their aptitude for the profession they will later pursue.

Tips:

• The more independently the students are to act in the practical course, the more important it is to have clear framework conditions and indications of what you expect from your students (what preparation, what prior knowledge, what activities, what degree of independence, what documentation).
• The more independently students are expected to act in the practical course, the more important it is also to be available for questions and to give students constructive feedback in critical situations so that they can use this information to continue working independently again.
• Consider having your students write a project journal, internship report, or portfolio and include this documentation in their grade. This allows students to reflect explicitly once again on what they have learned, which leads to a consolidation of knowledge. And it gives you a deeper insight into your students' knowledge gain.
• In the case of industrial internships, it is advisable to have the industry partner name a contact person for you and to meet with him or her at least once. In this way, you not only make new contacts that can be important for you and your students, but you can also clarify the expectations of both sides and find compromises in the event of discrepancies.

E-learning can be used in a variety of ways in university teaching - depending on the framework conditions, the target group, your personal ideas and your teaching style. The many different ways in which digital media can be created, made available and used offer great potential for enriching your teaching, activating your students and enabling them to access web-based knowledge resources on their own. Web-based communication and collaboration media also open up new forms of cooperation.

E-learning elements are generally referred to as digital media and web-based communication and collaboration media. These include, for example, digital scripts, e-tests, e-mails, forums, and wikis. If these are combined in a didactically sensible way, you can use them to accompany and support teaching and learning processes very well.

One of the reasons why the use of e-learning elements holds so much potential is that learning resources provided online can be prepared in multimedia form and accessed regardless of time or location. This makes it possible to take greater account of students' individual learning requirements and preferences than, for example, in a lecture hall. In addition, students who are unable to attend individual in-person courses have the opportunity to acquire the relevant knowledge. Another added value of the targeted use of e-learning elements is that the media competence of your students is expanded.

Common e-learning elements:

Classical academic teaching is mostly about conveying content in a way that enables learners to generate new knowledge or deepen existing knowledge in a protected teaching space. The actual application in a complex reality is often left to practical courses or, in extreme cases, even to later professional activity. At the same time, experiential elements can also be used already in teaching – and significantly increase motivation and comprehension.

Especially in the context of the competencies orientation demanded by the Bologna Process, experiential elements (e.g., inquiry-based or problem-based learning) in all teaching and in all teaching formats should contribute to better learning outcomes and so-called "deep" learning for students. But what is actually meant by "experiential learning"? We understand it to mean, above all, teaching methods that enable students to gain and apply knowledge within a realistic, immediate, and relevant learning environment. In other words, it is a matter of encountering the subject matter as directly as possible, rather than dealing with it exclusively in thought. The various teaching and learning formats include, for example, discovery learning, problem-based learning or research-based learning. Here, exciting references can be made to your own research, because you can choose subject areas or questions that are relevant to your own research. In this way, teaching can provide impetus for your research, and your students acquire extended social and personal skills in realistic situations over and above specialist knowledge.

Tips:

• Especially with experience-oriented methods, a change in the role of the instructor to learning guide/partner is necessary. This change of role must be clearly communicated to the students. The tasks of the instructor then consist primarily of accompanying a goal-oriented process and summarizing and securing the results through visualization.
• The confrontation with practically relevant tasks makes it possible to experience the significance of theoretical findings and can lead to new and more in-depth questions. It is therefore important to find typical problems for the subject that are suitable for stimulating the desired contents and ways of looking at things.