Continuing education and training of academic (teaching) staff and (teaching) change agents for engineering education: Concept and program for developing teaching and improving learning at university (name)

Abstract

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) is a traditional research university and one of the largest technical universities in Germany. Currently, about 30,000 students are enrolled with admissions of more than 5,000 new students per year in various bachelor's and master's programs and in PhD studies, primarily in engineering and architecture, mathematics, and natural sciences, fewer in humanities, social sciences, and economics. The teaching staff comprises only about 300 full-time professors, about 20 junior professors, few full-time and part-time lecturers, but nearly 2,500 research and teaching assistants. Current challenges for teaching and learning are caused by recent structural and curricular changes of the undergraduate and graduate programs, focusing more on the achievement of competence-oriented learning outcomes than on the delivery of content. This contradicts with partly traditional learning environments, in particular big classes with 1,000 or more students in introductory STEM-lectures. New teaching/learning arrangements are needed to increase student engagement, promote independent and active learning and raise student success rates. How can the teaching staff be motivated and qualified to create and implement this environment and establish an innovative and interactive teaching/learning culture? The approach of TU Berlin is twofold: first, to train the academic teaching staff individually to develop their pedagogical competences theoretically and practically with respect to interactive teaching and learning methods; and second as a new approach, to hire and train additional teaching "change agents" who are supposed to develop innovative teaching projects and to disseminate good practices in teaching and learning enhancement among faculty and their fellow teaching staff. This paper describes both the curriculum to qualify academic teaching staff and a model curriculum to qualify those in the new staff category, who are charged to function as "change agents." Experiences are discussed and a desirable profile of competences is outlined. The organizational structure of this paper covers "Introduction and Background," describing teaching at German universities and TU Berlin, "Questions and Overviews," highlighting the European Bologna-process and the research basis and framework for our continuing education program for teaching. The central chapter, "Program and Methods," focuses on general aspects of the target groups of regular academic teaching staff including additional offers, and teaching change agents. "Chances and Challenges" highlights quality assurance of the program and evaluation instruments. "Results and Recommendations" name the professional certificate and future assessment by interviews as well as a short list of the most successful training efforts for new teachers and some transferable elements for the adaption of our concept to other existing programs. Finally, "Conclusion and Outlook" names first effects, the future focus and expected outcomes.