Project: Learning through Teaching
The project “Learning through Teaching” developed from process support at the Institute for General and Vocational Education. In particular, it focuses on interdisciplinarity, internationalisation, gender and diversity sensitivity and research-related teaching.
Within the framework of the zQSL project “Learning through Teaching”, demand-oriented qualification and process support for student tutors was offered to interested institutes, departments and facilities of the TU Darmstadt in an interdisciplinary environment in the focus and project period from October 2009 to December 2021. The offer was aimed at advising and supporting institutes, departments and central facilities in which tutorials had already been installed or were to be offered in the future and for which didactic and methodological support was desired.
“Learning through Teaching” was oriented towards the specifics of the various subject disciplines and addressed the subject-specific challenges when supporting the tutors. The pedagogical support was in close contact with the persons responsible for the content. Against the backdrop of interdisciplinary cooperation, it was very important to take on board the special features and existing structures and to shape them together.
Since January 2022, the focus of the project “Learning through Teaching” has been on the implementation of courses and research-related work.

Supervision of practice in an interdisciplinary context
Until the end of the project period in December 2021, tutors from our cooperation partners were supervised at the following departments and central services of the TU Darmstadt:

  • Civil Engineering
  • History and social sciences
  • Human Sciences
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Writing Skills Centre of the Language Resource Centre
  • Language Resource Centre / Directorate VIII International Affairs


During the project period, five cooperation initiatives were successfully completed within the framework of the project “Learning through Teaching”. The participating departments/central institutions have established the professionalisation of tutorial work.

  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Earth Sciences
  • Language Resource Centre / Directorate VIII International Affairs


The spectrum of offers included the following interventions:
• (Basic) qualification workshops;
• Personal development workshops;
• Supervision meetings upon request;
• Individual consultation Private counselling upon request;
• Sitting in on a tutor’s class and immediate feedback;
• Providing support when developing a concept for tutoring work;
• Contact person for methodological and didactic questions and queries.

More information about the project

Until the end of the project period in September 2021, tutors from our cooperation partners were supervised at the following departments and central services of the TU Darmstadt:

• Civil Engineering

• History and social sciences

• Human Sciences

• Mechanical Engineering

• Writing Skills Centre of the Language Resource Centre

• Language Resource Centre / Directorate VIII International Affairs

During the project period, four cooperation initiatives were successfully completed within the framework of the project “Learning through Teaching”. All four departments agreed to continue their efforts to professionalise tutoring and were members of KI²VA Focus on Tutorial Teaching (Competence Development through Interdisciplinary and International Cooperation from the Start; Quality Pact for Teaching; Focus on Tutorial Teaching):

- Computer Science

- Mathematics

- Physics

- Earth Sciences

Continuations

Another tutorial format with the aim of preparing prospective refugee students for entering a study programme, is a project to be continued until the end of 2021 within the framework of “Learning through Teaching VI”. From January 2022, this will be financed until the end of 2023 via the LeNA teaching fund, thus ensuring a continuation of the cooperation and thus the deployment, the qualification and the practical support of the tutors in the writing tutorial.

The cooperation with the Directorate VIII and the Language Resource Centre (SPZ) started in the winter semester 2017/18. After determining the need and completing a conceptualisation phase with both cooperation partners, student tutors have been deployed since summer semester 2018 in courses preparing for university focussing on language skills customised for prospective students with a refugee background. The tutors have been qualified for their work in the writing courses on relevant subjects and methods. They have been sitting in on existing courses and reflecting their impressions together with LdL project members. During the deployment of the tutors, sitting in on classes and individual and immediate meetings providing feedback and opportunities to contemplate take place. In addition, there are workshops and process supervision meetings parallel to the tutors’ teaching practice.

A special feature of these tutorials is the fact that they take place before students begin their studies. They prepare the learners of German for their studies. The focus of these courses is on language examinations that must be taken by eligible refugees with university entrance qualifications. The courses are designed in such a way that the large group is divided into small groups, each small group is accompanied and supported by a tutor. With this type of supervision, individual learning can be facilitated more readily. The goal is to improve the teaching experience for learners and to raise the pass rate in examinations to enable prospective students to enter university.