Student-oriented tutorials in the master's program

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Project title:
Student-oriented tutorials in the Master's program

Fundedby:
Central Teaching Support (ZLF) of the University of Kassel

Project duration:
01.10.2016 - 28.02.2018

Final report:
Final report for download

Project description:
The project "Student-oriented tutorials in the Master's program" is a self-developed concept that is specifically designed to support students in the Master's program.

Approximately one third of the Master's students at the University of Kassel who take part in courses in the field of urban water management (SWW) have completed their Bachelor's degree at another university. Around half of these students come from abroad. Heterogeneous specialist knowledge and a lack of technical language skills pose a challenge for lecturers and students alike. In particular, the communication of lecture content often appears problematic, as it is often presented too simply for some and too complicated for others. To counteract this, the required basic knowledge from the Bachelor's course is often repeated in the Master's lectures. This delays the teaching of the actual content of the Master's lectures. This also leads to a lack of interest among students with a high level of prior specialist knowledge.

The concept of student-oriented tutorials was developed to counteract this problem as flexibly as possible. Tests are used to test students' knowledge of the basic topics required in Master's lectures and the results are returned as personal feedback. The basic knowledge is repeated on a voluntary basis during the tutorials accompanying the lectures, whereby the choice of topics in the tutorials and the time frame of the course are flexibly tailored to the needs of the students. This is intended to improve students' basic knowledge of the specialization subject and thus simplify the teaching of in-depth knowledge in Master's lectures.

At present, three to four teaching modules are offered in the SWW specialization in each semester of the Master's degree course. As a rule, Master's students take at least four to a maximum of seven SWW subjects after choosing their specialization. Due to an interdisciplinary choice of topics in the tutorials, the entire SWW specialization is covered and several teaching modules are supported at the same time.

Another aim of the concept is to increase students' motivation to learn. Students are shown their subject-specific strengths and weaknesses and their knowledge growth is made visible by means of personalized feedback during the lectures. Students should thus be made directly aware of their learning successes.

In addition, the tutorials are to be designed in such a way that foreign students receive more specialist support. Furthermore, the increased use of group-oriented teaching methods in the tutorials will promote professional exchange and networking.

The project "Student-oriented tutorials in the Master's program" serves to further develop learning and teaching and was funded by the Central Teaching Funding (ZLF) of the University of Kassel in the "Heterogeneity" funding line. The project was developed and successfully established over three semesters (winter semester 2016/2017 (partial); summer semester 2017 and winter semester 2017/2018) in the Department of Urban Water Management (FG SWW) at the University of Kassel in the Master's program in Environmental and Civil Engineering.

Following the ZLF funding, the study committee of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the University of Kassel (meeting on 14.02.2018) approved the continuation of the study-accompanying tutoring program for the time being until the end of the winter semester 2018/2019 at the request of the FG SWW on 08.02.2018 with the possibility of a permanent integration into the teaching program of the FG SWW in the event of successful implementation.