Approaching university didactics with a focus on practical application

Recommendations for the design of continuing education and training programmes

Systematically promote collegial teaching and learning cultures

To anchor informal and individualised teaching developments more sustainably, targeted, structured and low-threshold spaces for collegial exchange can be created. Reflection and exchange formats such as peer learning groups, collegial consultations or interdisciplinary exchange forums can be useful for this purpose.

In addition, opportunities to highlight good teaching practice can be created, for example through teaching labs, brown bag formats or internal teaching impulses. This makes it possible to establish a culture of joint reflection, learning and further development of teaching.

Systematising the professionalisation of teachers

For structured and continuous support of the professionalisation of teaching, the development of practical further training courses geared towards specific teaching situations is recommended. These programmes, such as topic-specific micro-workshops or short didactic impulses, should be systematically supplemented by elements of reflection, collegial feedback and cooperative teaching formats.

In addition, it seems sensible to establish a permanent community of practice for the continuous professionalisation process and the transfer between further training and teaching practice.

Strengthening didactic flexibility in a targeted manner

In view of heterogeneous student groups and dynamic conditions, it is necessary to support teachers in developing and implementing teaching concepts that can be adapted to specific situations. The provision of a modular, interdisciplinary toolkit allows for the bundling of variable and tried-and-tested teaching formats.

To promote a professional approach to heterogeneity, concrete examples and strategies for differentiating teaching offerings can also be made systematically accessible.

Anchoring competence orientation in the curriculum

Key competences, or future skills, can be anchored in teaching and examination through visible and binding integration into competence-oriented learning objectives, for example in the areas of data competence, teamwork, critical thinking and communication.

In addition, existing curriculum workshops can also help to strengthen the curricular anchoring of competence orientation. Participatory, research- and practice-oriented teaching formats, such as case studies, research-based and problem-oriented learning, can be promoted.

Consciously designing face-to-face teaching as social added value

The indispensability of face-to-face teaching can be further strengthened by profiling it as a place of social, collaborative and experience-based learning. To this end, it is advisable to use face-to-face formats primarily for interactive, dialogical and community-building learning settings, e.g. through excursions, peer interactions or project-based work.

In addition, the development and design of spatial concepts geared towards exchange, experience and participation can also be helpful. At this point, reference can be made to the initiative of Department 1 at Frankfurt UAS, which is considering incorporating modern learning spaces into the redesign of Building 9.

Facilitate access to continuing education in university teaching

Access to continuing education in university teaching can be facilitated, for example, by expanding micro-learning formats and integrating offerings more strongly into existing work structures through team teaching or collegial observation. In addition, in-house continuing education offerings can be further strengthened, including through HR.

Supporting strategic teaching development in a participatory manner

Teachers can be more closely involved in the further development of the university as an educational institution. The systematic participation of teachers in strategic processes relating to teaching, room design, digitisation and study organisation can be effective in this regard.

In this way, existing teaching expertise can be used to formulate university-specific didactic guidelines, and university didactics can act as a mediating instance between practice, innovation and strategy, building on existing structures such as the AI Task Force, the Quality Image Teaching and the strategic guidelines.

At the beginning of the project, the plan was to develop an UAS specific didactic approach for Frankfurt UAS. This was based on the assumption that Universities of Applied Sciences are particularly characterized by practice-oriented features, which might require a distinct higher education didactic framework.

However, recent research findings (Lämmlein, Lutz-Vock, Engelmann, 2025) show that a separate UAS didactic approach has not emerged in the discourse on higher education didactics. Instead, an integrative approach to higher education didactics prevails. Against this backdrop, the focus is now on developing a transformative higher education didactic model. In addition, we will provide a competency framework for teaching.

In June, Prof. Dr. Stefan Braun, Prof. Dr. Barbara Lämmlein, Prof. Dr. Carola Berneiser, and Hannah Lutz-Vock represented Frankfurt UAS at the ICED Conference at the United States International University–Africa. The theme of the conference was “Advancing Higher Education Ecosystems for Competency Development.”

• "The ecosystem within the ecosystem: the School of Personal Development and Education (ScoPE) as institutionalised crossfaculty think tank and icubator of university innovations" (Prof. Dr. Barbara Lämmlein, Hannah Lutz-Vock)
• "Implementation of a transformative teacher-training program to strengthen the SDG's within the teaching and learning processes" (Prof. Dr. Stefan Braun M.A., Dr. Sabrina Engelmann)
• Piloting a standardised curriculum development process for the design of sustainable and innovative study programs in the context of system accreditation processes using the example of the Social Work degree program at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences" (Prof. Dr. Stefan Braun M.A., Prof. Dr. Carola Berneiser).