My Approach
Start and Development
I started teaching as tutorial lecturer for quantitative methods in my 2nd study year. Since 1997, I taught over 85 courses on different areas (e.g., Social Psychology, Research Methods, Business Psychology, Communication, Media), topics (e.g., Stereotypes, Statistics, Coaching) and on different Diplom, MA and BA levels. My teaching qualifications include the BKO, the German venia legendi (right to teach and promote PhD candidates in Germany) and the SEQ (Senior Examination Qualification, 2021). The SEQ can be seen on the level of the SUTQ (Senior University Teaching Qualification), however, is specifically addressed to strengthen the professional development concerning assessment and quality of assessment for lecturers and members of the exam committees. The course helped me developing two projects that I currently establishing within our faculty: 1. Linking different forms of assessments to specific course and general programme goals and (e.g., revisiting the assessment plan of each programme) and 2. improvement and unifying the thesis assessment process within and between the departments.
I have been an active member of different Examination Boards since 2008 (Cologne University 2008-2012, since 2017 ESHCC). This position helps me to understand, examine and improve assessment forms that fit to the teaching goals and to skills that students need to develop during their studies. I became chair of the Examination Board of ESHCC in November 2020. The lockdown situation in 2020 and 2021 and tasks concerning online (non)proctored exams and online assessment in general were a challenge and an opportunity as well. And yes, that is my signature under the diplomas 😉
All these numbers ! Teaching Statistics
Especially topics like quantitative methods need a student friendly approach. It is important to reduce fear and enhance understanding while showing the importance of the content in real life situations. I developed various examples to help students embrace statistics (e.g., how to clean up your closet by using factor analysis, how a bar talk connects to hypotheses). Next to the usual lectures, tutorials and formative / summative assessments, I created new forms of teaching such as PodCats (podcasts with cats as spontaneous guests) and click videos for SPSS. PodCats include a “journalist” and a “guest” and focus on weekly questions that students submitted to the topic. This allows to add and repeat information in a less robotic way. Especially during lockdown/online teaching times, these formats were highly valued by students and new members of the teaching teams.
… Supervision
By now, I supervised 94 BA theses (86 since I started my position at ESHCC), 21 MA theses and 13 Diplom Theses (Germany). Out of these theses, 11 resulted in high ranked peer-reviewed journals and 27 in peer-reviewed conference presentations.