InnoL regularly brings together lecturers from all faculties to discuss innovative didactic approaches. Antje Nissler, Managing Director of the Service Centre for Teaching and Didactics (LuD), emphasised that the event is now a permanent fixture among lecturers: "Lecturers from all faculties meet here, exchange ideas, share ideas and get inspired. It's not about ready-made solutions, but about open dialogue - and about learning from and with each other."
Birgit Rösel, Vice President for Studies and Teaching, thanked the team at the Teaching and Didactics Service Centre for their support in the area of university didactics. She emphasised that in times of profound social and technological change - for example through digitalisation or AI - examination concepts need to be rethought. OTH Regensburg is creating the appropriate framework conditions for digital examination formats, for example through infrastructure, further training courses and individual counselling. The Vice President encouraged lecturers to ‘think beyond paper’ and take a chance on digital examinations.
Around 40 participants - on site and online - discussed new concepts, experiences and tools on 24 June and took the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues.
Modern learning needs space - and the right space at that
The event kicked off with the presentation of the new SCALE-UP room at the Prüfening site (P 271). Prof Dr Martin Pohl (IM Faculty) and Yannick Rodrian (LuD) gave a vivid demonstration of how learning spaces can be designed to turn deductive knowledge transfer into collaborative, interactive work. Thanks to funding from the BayernMINT programme, a space has been created that combines technical flexibility with a didactically sound usage concept.
The room offers code clinics, networked group workstations and portable whiteboards - it is not only provided, but deliberately designed. In addition to use for courses, fixed time slots are provided for students to enable collaborative learning outside of classes.
Exams as places of learning?
The second session showed that examinations are not the end, but can be part of a learning process: Dr Irina Augustin and Anna Zehentbauer from the Teaching and Didactics Service Centre reported on the Bavaria-wide joint project Implementing Digital Competence-Oriented Examination (ii.oo). For four years, practical formats have been developed and tested at nine Bavarian universities - with over 350 examinations conducted in this project period alone. The spectrum ranges from e-portfolios and open-book examinations to bring-your-own-device models with technical security. OTH Regensburg is not only a partner, but also an active co-designer of this future-orientated examination culture - even beyond the duration of the project.
One current example of technical support is the planned chatbot ‘Tio’, an interactive guide for digital examinations. Specific questions on the framework conditions of the courses and learning group are used to provide recommendations on various examination scenarios - with handouts and practical tips.
Examination rethought
Prof Dr Thomas Schreck (Faculty BM) concluded the event with a presentation on how even supposedly traditional processes can be implemented innovatively. In his presentation entitled ‘Take-Home, Take-a-Look’: A different way to view exams, he illustrated how Moodle can be used to organise exams efficiently and didactically. Digital group exam viewing in the CIP pool enables questions to be asked and makes organisation more efficient - something that is particularly helpful for large learning groups. This also shows that small changes in implementation can have a big impact.
And what's next?
The event made it clear that good teaching needs spaces - both literally and figuratively. Spaces where people can try things out, think together and develop them further. OTH Regensburg supports lecturers in realising innovative teaching ideas - from designing didactically meaningful spaces to digital examination formats and technical implementation. The event slides are available in the internal tutorial area of the Teaching and Didactics Service Centre (see links below).
The next event in the InnovativeLehre@OTH Regensburg series will focus on the internationalisation of teaching. Teachers who would like to share their teaching concepts with colleagues can contact the Teaching and Didactics Service Centre at any time - we look forward to your contributions!
Further information:
- Information about th SCALE UP room
- Project homepage ii.oo
- Slides of the event in the internal tutorial course of the Teaching and Didactics Service Centre
