26/10/2022 | Review Teaching Futures Day 06.10.2022

First Teaching Futures Day met with great interest among lectures

On October 6, 2022, the Teaching Futures Day took place, both online and on site in the rooms of the Lab for Innovative Teaching at Justus Liebig University Giessen. The information and networking event of the joint project NIDIT gave lectures impulses and ideas for university teaching in the coming semesters in short workshops and lectures.

With almost 90 registrations, this first Teaching Futures Day met with great interest among national and international lectures. The day was characterized by the concept of hybridity: thematically in the keynotes and workshops and very practically in the implementation in the afternoon. After the welcoming speech by Prof Dr Katharina Lorenz, Vice-President for Learning and Teaching and principal investigator of NIDIT, the keynote by Dr. Ian Davis (University of Southern Queensland/Australia) was dedicated to the topic "Learning from everywhere: hybridity, borders and belonging in high impact digital pedagogies". This was followed by parallel workshops that focused on the one hand on social media, action research and assessing one's own digital and international competencies in teaching. On the other hand, in the second parallel session there was the opportunity to learn more about virtual international teaching and its competencies, as well as to participate in examples and insights from a cross-cultural international COIL seminar.

The afternoon offered a glimpse into the possible future of university teaching and started with the keynote "Our vision: from blended learning to blended university" by Johanna Leifeld, project manager for Hochschulforum Digitalisierung from the non-profit Centre for Higher Education. Afterwards, thanks to the hybrid setting, both the online participants and the on-site visitors were able to participate in the thematic exchange in the Giessen Lab. The Labs for Innovative Teaching at Philipps-University Marburg and JLU in Giessen then presented themselves in a live parallel session. On site in Marburg, Vice-President for Education Prof Dr Kati Hannken-Illjes presented the possibilities of the Marburg Lab to use virtual reality or even the video and computer game lab for the university sector. The Giessen Lab joined in with a demonstration of its VR Treadmill, the VR lending station and the workstations on which, for example, virtual teaching rooms can be created. Prof Dr Siegfried Schindler concluded with "Best Practices of virtual reality" from university teaching. The opportunity to try out the devices on site was used and many participants made their first own experiences with virtual reality.

More information can be found at the event overview (https://www.taskcards.de/#/board/13ba24e2-ce91-4ece-b1e2-5444f29b38fa/view?token=f2fdf777-b9cf-4044-8f11-fe1c9daf62a1) and the corresponding online whiteboard (https://app.conceptboard.com/board/9nrf-mgtq-ohee-78da-o5h0#) as well as in the in the NIDIT media library (Q&A). Video recordings of the keynotes and workshops will also be online soon. To stay informed about other events and activities, feel free to sign up for the NIDIT newsletter: https://www.uni-giessen.de/nidit/newsletter.