Digital Teaching Innovations
The Rectorate Awards the Initiative Prize

Initiative Prize for Digitally Aided Teaching Innovations

Seeking to assist with the conception of new eLearning programs and to develop existing provision, the University of Bonn has run the Initiative Prize for Digitally Aided Teaching Innovations since 2017. With a maximum funding sum of €30,000 (max. funding period one year) the prize seeks to enable the implementation of excellent initiatives in the area of digitally assisted teaching.

The program aims to,

  • stimulate the development and testing of digitally-assisted teaching, learning and examination formats or the mobilization of digital technologies to re-design modules and study periods,
  • promote discussions of university teaching
  • disseminate innovative teaching forms; and to entrench digitally-assisted university teaching in the faculties and the Bonn Center for Teacher Education (BZL).

Initiative Prize 2020

Prize winner:  Prof. Dr. Jutta Standop from the Bonn Center for Teacher Education

For the project “ACTIVATE – Acquiring Competencies Through Innovative Video Annotations in Teacher Education” (funding volume €28,780.76)

Students on teaching degrees are encouraged to improve their level of professionalism through the use of multi-week video case learning units focusing on the topic of classroom management. Students use innovative technology to produce high-quality video case studies, which they then annotate with digital tools. The case studies are developed as scripted videos on the basis of insights derived from modern learning theory. The students edit the videos by working within a blended learning format, using cooperative annotation to anchor comments and discussions on the corresponding points in the video. This approach avoids the high level of cognitive stress otherwise associated with video case-study based work; strategic focusing can provide important impulses for video case-study work.

Prize winner: Gösta Hoffmann from the Institute of Geosciences in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Project: “OutcropWizard – Virtual Geology” (funding volume €29,297.97)

Practical outdoor training is a highly effective method of training for students of the geosciences. Excursions are a central aspect of practical outdoor training, but are expensive and require intensive preparation. This innovative project deploys the smartphone application OutcropWizard to act as a digital link between classroom theory and outdoor practical training. Replacing traditional time-consuming methods, the application provides an interactive map locating points of geoscientific interest and navigational tools, with the ability to incorporate images, videos and 3D models.

Prize winner: Dr. Julia Steinhoff-Wagner from the Institute of Animal Sciences in the Faculty of Agriculture

Project: “Digital Enriched Items” (funding volume €29,933.28)

Seeking to realize the potential of e-written examinations for the integration of digital materials to ensure a practical approach, this project uses a matrix of different types of task and digital formats to enable the development of innovative examination tasks.

Prize winner: Dr. Ulrich Blum, Thomas Hildebrand and Dr. Vera Wethkamp from the Department Physics/Astronomy of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Project: “Measuring with Smartphone Technologies (funding volume €13,500.00)

The subject didactic seminars of the physics teacher training (bachelor’s degree) introduce students to the use of smartphone and tablet-based mobile data recording and evaluation systems in order to equip the teachers of the future to deal with the developments of the digital age.

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