Leuphana drives innovation in University teaching forward
2022-05-19 Lüneburg/Hamburg. Shortly after its award as an innovative university by the Joint Science Conference of Germany, Leuphana University Lüneburg can once again chalk up a success. As the Foundation for Innovation in University Teaching has now announced, the university will receive funding for four projects to improve studying and teaching. In total, the Foundation is funding one third of the 600 projects applied for within the framework of the "Freiraum 2022" call for proposals with a total of 46 million euros. The projects were selected in a competitive, science-led process involving experts from universities and science as well as representatives of the federal states and the federal government.
The Leuphana projects, which will be funded for a period of one year starting in July, deal with strengthening students' ability to reflect, expanding data literacy education at the college, strengthening the culture of debate in courses and further developing language-building engagement in German lessons. The funding for all projects together amounts to more than half a million euros. Leuphana submitted a total of five applications and was able to achieve a respectable approval rate of 80 percent with the award of four projects.
With funding of a good 270,000 euros, the project applied for by Dr. Steffi Hobuß, academic director of Leuphana College, to improve the culture of debate in courses, received the largest amount of funding among the Leuphana projects. The aim of this initiative is to sensitise both teachers and students to the speech situations in courses and to promote active participation in discussions by as many students as possible, especially in seminars. To this end, among other things, a digital platform is being created that enables anonymous, reflective, respectful and constructive exchange among students about the speech situation in courses.
University President Sascha Spoun is pleased about the renewed success: "For Leuphana, discourse and the consideration of diversity have always been in the foreground for unhindered participation in studies because of its special study model. In addition, our campus also offers the best conditions for realising innovations in university teaching. The applications submitted show how imaginative our teachers are in making use of this situation."
"The successful projects have convinced us with their innovative potential: with their approaches, they go beyond existing teaching and learning settings and test new things for teaching and studying," the Foundation praised the selected projects.
Background:
Since 2021, the Innovation in Higher Education Foundation has been committed to innovations in teaching and learning throughout Germany. To this end, it supports projects at individual universities or joint projects. In addition, the foundation creates networking opportunities for teaching designers, strengthens knowledge transfer and promotes the exchange of project results, successes and challenges. All funds for this new academic institution are provided by the federal and state governments.
Further information on the individual projects at Leuphana can be found here.