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Innovation in teaching
The DaTa-Pin Innovation Hub provides funding and support for innovative projects that seek to develop, test and disseminate pioneering digital teaching, learning and e-assessment tools and methods. Currently, 19 innovation projects are being funded by DaTa-Pin. Detailed information on each project is available below.
Saarland University successfully applied for funding for its DaTa-Pin project from the Foundation for Innovation in Higher Education (Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre). DaTa-Pin focuses on the systematic evaluation of existing digital teaching, learning and examination activities and how these can be developed and upscaled into transferable best-practice concepts. The DaTa-Pin project is lead managed by Saarland University's Education and Quality Assurance Division and is carried out in cooperation with the Digitalization and Sustainability Unit. DaTa-Pin is built around a participatory approach with both teaching staff and students involved in the development of innovative digital teaching and learning formats that also tie in with existing activities and programmes offered by the university's central institutions.
The project aims to bring together existing structures and services and to establish three intermeshed functional areas ('hubs'): a knowledge hub for systematic knowledge management in the field of digital teaching, digital learning and e-assessments as well as managing best practice concepts; a competence-building hub that provides methodological and technical support as well as professional training for teachers; and an innovation hub for developing and testing new digital teaching, learning and examination programmes within novel innovative projects. Currently, 19 innovation projects across a range of faculties are being funded by DaTa-Pin.
In the SaarPreneur project, an English-language teaching and learning module is being developed together with English/American Studies students that simulates the founding of a company in Saarland in order to give non-German-speaking university members a practical insight into the typical phases of founding a company in the specific environment of Saarland. In the spirit of practice-relevant transfer teaching (third mission), the module will not only be developed with students of English Studies, but will also be available as a plug-in module for teaching throughout the university.
Applicants:
- Dr Cornelia Gerhardt (English, American Studies and Anglophone Cultures)
- Junior Professor Dr Benedikt Schnellbächer (Business Administration, in particular Digital Transformation and Business Start-ups)
The topics of climate protection and sustainability are dealt with in an interdisciplinary manner by students from different disciplines in order to create an interactive wiki on the topics, which illustrates the scientific view of a complex topic across different disciplines.
Applicant: Prof Dr Guido Kickelbick (Inorganic Solid State Chemistry)
The aim of the project is to sustainably introduce, establish and build up experience in the use of a competence-oriented e-assessment platform for graph-based conceptual modelling (BMBF project KEA-Mod), which is currently under development and supports (1) automatic feedback on proposed solutions submitted as part of the course and/or (2) the evaluation of exam solutions (formative and summative e-assessment) in various addressed subject areas (computer science, business informatics, business administration, etc.) that use conceptual modelling.
Applicant: Prof. Dr Peter Loos (Business Administration, in particular Business Informatics)
In this project, AI-based technologies are being developed that enable students to access extensive materials in a targeted and problem-solving orientated manner. In particular, a scenario is supported in which students work on exercises and access the information available for solving these tasks in the teaching materials in a focussed manner. Modern AI methods of intention recognition and searching in unstructured documents enable such solutions.
Applicant: Prof. Dr. Jana Koehler (Artificial Intelligence)
Students are actively involved in the development, conception and implementation of output-oriented formats in digital teaching-learning scenarios (analogue, digital, hybrid teaching), whereby they learn to adapt flexibly to ‘on/off’ situations as participants and at the same time to use available platforms productively as ‘makers’.
Applicant: Prof. Dr Markus Peschel (Didactics of Sachunterricht)
The interactive online course should be available at any time, regardless of the semester, for students of economics who are writing an academic paper (seminar, bachelor's thesis, master's thesis, etc.) in the context of business informatics and teach them the most important methodological principles and theories in business informatics.
Applicant: Junior Professor Dr Stefan Morana (Business Administration, in particular Digital Transformation and Information Systems)
Law students need intensive application support in criminal law in the form of correcting as many criminal law practice exams as possible.
The digital automated method introduced here enables the immediate correction of submitted solutions and also allows students to receive individualised support. Furthermore, it can be used regardless of the number of users.
Applicant: Prof. Dr Marco Mansdörfer (German and European Criminal Law including Commercial Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Law)
On the one hand, this project will develop digital offers for professional orientation in the sense of new formats, and on the other hand, the use of digital tools, methods and theories in the humanities will be promoted in preparation for an increasingly digital working world.
Applicant: Dr Patrick Poppe (Study Coordination Faculty of Humanities)
The patient case simulator is a case-based online learning environment for medical students in which diagnostic and therapeutic decision-making can be practised on simulated patients over a realistic period of time during the course of a disease.
Applicants:
- Junior Professor Dr Daniela Yildiz (Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology; Centre for Human and Molecular Biology (ZHMB))
- Prof. Dr Armin Weinberger (Educational Sciences)
- Prof. Dr Johannes Jäger (Centre for General Medicine)
Students acquire methodological skills in digital data management in business and science through a hybrid course to be designed, i.e. based on flipped/inverted classroom and problem-based learning, already in the Bachelor's programme.
Applicants:
- Prof. Dr. Kathrin Flaßkamp, Markus Herrmann-Wicklmayr (Modelling and Simulation of Technical Systems)
- Prof. Dr Stefan Seelecke, Dr Paul Motzki (Intelligent Material Systems)
- Prof. Dr Andreas Schütze, Tizian Schneider (Measurement Technology / Data Engineering & Smart Sensors)
The project includes the partial digitisation of the practical language courses and the creation of a blended-learning platform to prepare for the language exams in English Studies. Diagnostics and self-study are provided via Moodle tests and H5P activities.
Applicants:
- Daniel Honert (English, American Studies and Anglophone Cultures)
- Dr Henry Rademacher (English, American Studies and Anglophone Cultures)
Establishment of an interdisciplinary contact point for KI-POCUS and TBA, for the joint use of digital innovation teaching modules (toolbox concept) in medical studies as part of a competence-oriented blended learning concept in general practice in Homburg.
Applicant: Dr Fabian Dupont (Centre for General Practice)
Data-based decisions do not just have to be a buzzword, but can also be implemented well with the appropriate tools. By using the R data analysis environment, students experience in a very concrete way how they can use state-of-the-art techniques to create the transfer from science to practice and make theoretical controlling concepts tangible. In the flipped classroom with the support of numerous programming videos, an online learning platform and student work in the R-Studio cloud, didactic elements are combined and complement the online workshops. Individual coaching sessions help to solve individual programming problems.
Applicant: Prof. Dr Alexander Baumeister (Business Administration, especially Controlling)
This innovation project investigates how digital teaching content and different teaching concepts can be successfully combined for a hybrid (i.e. simultaneously face-to-face and online) teaching format in order to fulfil the requirements of students and lecturers in economics.
Applicant: Junior Professor Dr Stefan Morana (Junior Professor of Business Administration, in particular Digital Transformation and Information Systems)