Professor Kornhuber, his students and digital teaching

Since our faculty—and especially our class—offers digital versions of virtually all modules, we can easily compare Prof. Kornhuber’s teaching with other plans and procedures.

In particular, I think the use of MS Teams stood out , which makes the process much more relaxed for us, since it allows us to easily share files, make lectures interactive, and even create our own student groups.
This is a welcome change, since we really only need to use one tool for the lecture instead of countless different ones like Webex, BBB, filr, OPAL, etc.

“Interactivity” was indeed the key word here, as Prof. Kornhuber, more than any other professor, emphasizes student participation. In the High-Voltage Engineering module, for example, the in-person component originally called for students to create posters and prepare accompanying presentations on various topics. However, we have now carried these out almost unchanged in Teams, which, while certainly took some getting used to, was—for me, at least—very instructive for my future work in the corporate world.

Prof. Kornhuber also “encourages” students to pose questions to one another, which in turn are used to generate the exam questions. As a result, the synergy between the professor and the students is truly enjoyable, as the entire course feels more like a large panel of experts, with Prof. Kornhuber simply imparting the most knowledge.

Furthermore, the High-Voltage Engineering course is the only one that has succeeded, together with the other instructors, in conducting the numerous lab sessions digitally (in preparation for the upcoming in-person sessions).

Overall, it is the very extensive engagement in discussions on the topics Prof. Kornhuber raises that sets him apart from the other instructors. In short, his class simply feels the most like a conventional in-person course with a strong student-centered focus.

I have deliberately omitted the professor from the question, as my points do not relate directly to Prof. Kornhuber, but to digital teaching in general.
 
For me, the interaction between lecturers and students is particularly important, which sometimes feels strange in online teaching, as it is possible to simply remain silent, which is not possible in a face-to-face course.
 
In addition, the pace is often too fast in all courses, as the professors cannot check whether the students are still writing or similar, but most of them also get feedback on this.
 

For me, the strengths of the course include 5 points:

• The proactivity, we had an almost seamless transition of the class / course from classroom teaching to online teaching. Communication always took place with enough lead time in the lecture and only if absolutely necessary by e-mail and was to the point.
• The dynamic and interaction with the students is often encouraged before the actual class / course by the obligation to send in 3 questions for the topic to be discussed together. If the dynamic breaks down in a normal lecture without a group discussion, Professor Kornhuber reacts flexibly and gives the students time to let the content sink in for 5 minutes and then ask questions.
• The feedback culture and appreciative communication at eye level, combined with binding persistence in the event of feedback from students that is obviously too brief. Sharing one's own screen in seminars is permitted if the solutions to tasks are unclear.
• Goal- and practice-oriented didactics through self-delivered expert lectures followed by a mandatory discussion. Professor Kornhuber also relies on the MS Teams software, which is already used by many dual students in the company. The familiarization phase was correspondingly short and there were no foreseeable capacity-related lecture cancellations, as was the case in other lectures at the beginning of the semester.
• He sees himself as a facilitator and moderator in the organization of his class / course. The transfer of responsibility and the achievement of joint solutions is achieved through his moderation and not by decree, but in such a way that the best joint solution prevails and is also supported by the students.