Academic teaching University courses

Teaching at universities is close to my heart: It allows me to share my knowledge, engage with students, and help them defining their own future. Since more than ten years, I seize teaching academic teaching opportunities, so far covering universities and universities of applied sciences in two countries.

In a nutshell

Challenge: preparing students for their future careers
Solution: Courses covering both practical, hands-on- mostly collaborative work and theoretical foundations
Result: Positive course evaluations

Selected examples of my teaching at universities

Example 1: Human-centered design and analysis of digital media

In times of digitalization, the success of companies depends more and more on whether their digital products and services meet people's needs and provide a good user experience. Media scholars have great potential to design digital media in a user-friendly way and to adapt them to new usage needs. In a seminar at the University of Trier (November 2019 to February 2020), I taught students the basics of designing successful digital products and services. All students collaborated on a project and validated a low-fidelity prototype with users.

Example 2: Web conception

My course "Web conception" at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne (block seminar in two groups, July 2022) was part of the module on information architecture for the web and introduced fundamentals of conceptual design for the web. Various hands-on exercises, a computer-based exam, and home work allowed students to deepen their knowledge, especially given the structure as a block seminar over two full days. A "Question and Answer" session via Zoom allowed for additional preparation for the exam.

Results

Whenever possible, my courses include course evaluation. Example evaluations from the University of Applied Sciences Cologne (1 = agree, 5 = do not agree) include:

The importance of this course for my studies was made clear: 1.5 (out of 5)
The use of digital media enhances my learning results: 1.7 (out of 5)
The trainer supports my learning process with the didactic design of the course: 1.7 (out of 5)
I can reproduce important terms and concepts of the course topics: 1.7 (out of 5)

Breaks were used optimally. Perfect Miro board for group work. Anyone could work in parallel. Group work lightened up.

Example of an anonymous student feedback (University of Applied Sciences, Cologne)

In addition, my experience covers assessment activities. In the courses above, these include 16 written reports ("Hausarbeiten", example 1) and 49 computer-based tests with free text entry questions (example 2).