Mirko Meboldt is honoured for an innovative teaching concept

“At ETH Zurich, teaching and research form a single unit. That’s why innovative teaching concepts are just as important as scientific research,” stated Felicitas Pauss, President of the ETH Lecturers’ Conference (KdL), in her opening remarks for the awards ceremony. The KdL created the KITE Award for Key Innovation in Teaching at ETH with a view to supporting the development of excellent teaching concepts. The idea is for these methods to motivate students to delve deeper into subjects and to prepare them for working life.

“We want our KITE Award to honour colleagues who succeed in renewing how we teach and in developing new concepts for future generations of researchers,” ETH President Lino Guzzella added.

Two dozen nominations

“The 2016 KITE Award goes to Mirko Meboldt and his team for the project-oriented concept behind their ‘Innovation Project’ and the associated course on coaching and team leadership,” Rector Sarah Springman announced yesterday evening to some 200 guests gathered in ETH Zurich’s Auditorium Maximum.

She stressed that all three finalists had delivered excellent work and deserved the award. What the finalists’ concepts had in common was a focus on small-group and project work as opposed to “chalk-and-talk”, lecture-style teaching. The finalists themselves stated that they are keen to do more to share their ideas with each other in future.

For the inaugural KITE Awards, two dozen projects were nominated from twelve departments. An eight-person selection committee made up of members of the KdL, students, scientific staff and an external expert evaluated the projects in terms of their effectiveness, innovation and sustainability before selecting three of them. From these finalists, the KdL selected the winning concept.

Experiencing the process while studying

“Our teaching concept is the result of three years of development work, and we will continue to refine it,” said the first winner of the KITE Award, Mirko Meboldt. “Thanks to our active engagement with students, every year of studies is different from the one before,” he added, “and my team and I are constantly learning, too – not only new facts but also new ways to improve the teaching concept.”

The roots of this learning format go back more than 20 years to work done by Professor Markus Meier and continued by his successor, Roland Siegwart. Meboldt built his concept upon this format, and implemented it for the first-semester students at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering in 2013 for the first time.

It is characterised by critical thinking and problem-oriented, experience-based learning. Rather than acquiring knowledge about mechatronic relationships passively, students experience that knowledge themselves on their own by working in small project teams. These teams work up a mechatronic system from the initial idea through to a tested production system. For support, the students can turn to coaches from more advanced semesters, who have developed their skills and experience in a related coaching course.

That little bit of extra creativity

In his speech, Professor Chorh Chuan Tan, President of the National University of Singapore (NUS), stressed that teaching needs to take into account changes in the working world. With knowledge now freely available over the internet, and robots and computers taking on many work steps in future, jobs will increasingly disappear – especially in middle management.

What is needed, he continued, are highly qualified leaders and service providers. Anyone looking to succeed in the jobs market of the future must be in possession of that little bit of extra creativity and innovation that machines don’t have. He also assumes that, in future, employees will engage in lifetime learning and switch between different career paths. Entrepreneurial thinking, social skills and the ability to work in international, interdisciplinary teams are becoming ever more important.

“Universities need to lay the groundwork for students to be able to create something new,” added Professor Heribert Nacken, the RWTH Aachen Rectorate’s representative for Blended Learning, during the subsequent panel discussion. Gerd Folkers led the discussion with enthusiasm, and keynote speaker Chorh Chuan Tan and Sarah Springman also took part. The panellists all agreed that it is important to engage with students and investigate what knowledge is truly essential.

The three finalists’ teaching concepts

Development of mechatronic systems: Mirko Meboldt developed the project-based “Innovation Project” course for the up to 500 first-semester students in the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT). Divided into 90 teams of five to six, the students are responsible for working up a product from the initial idea through to a tested mechatronic system. The teams are supported by 30 coaches from more advanced semesters – with the coaches themselves simultaneously learning the basics of leadership and coaching in the “Leading Engineering Projects and Coaching Design Teams” course.

Transdisciplinary collaboration: At the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Gisbert Schneider offers a progressive series of transdisciplinary courses on the topic of “Computer-Assisted Drug Design”. The series is aimed at students of natural and life sciences and helps them develop skills such as mathematical modelling, chemical synthesis and biochemical analysis of active substances. During a two-week practical block, small groups of students form virtual firms to develop and present a molecule with a particular pharmacological function.

Alternative for large groups: Renate Schubert has completely redesigned the “Economy” course for up to 500 students at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (D-GESS). Now scripts, videos, interactive exercises and current media reports are provided electronically for preparatory self-study. Course participants work in small groups to develop economics arguments with sample use cases. Students with substantial prior knowledge or a preference for traditional teaching methods form separate groups. The students select the study elements that best suit them from a wide range of options, meaning they take responsibility for their own learning.