Special Award, Hessischer Hochschulpreis für Exzellenz in der Lehre

On July 13, the President of the university presented me with my Special Award as part of the Award for Hessian Universities for Excellence in Teaching (Hessischer Hochschulpreis für Exzellenz in der Lehre), for my project “E-Portfolios as an Assessment Tool for Online and Face-to-Face Courses”. And yes, I particularly love that Harry Potter-style moving photo 😄.

The project was born out of a rather tricky challenge: how to meaningfully assess student competences as part of their rather short methodology training? My online course only lasts 6 weeks, the campus-based traditional face-to-face version only 1 semester. In addition, I want students not just to “fake” some research but apply what they have learned theoretically in a semi-realistic setting and also avoid a sitution, in which students complete assignments mostly with the goal of fulfilling a requirement to pass the module. Thus, the idea of connecting the students’ own research experiences and reflections on them in the form of an e-porfolio was born. And now I can empirically back up my claim: this is award-winning stuff.