Teaching Centre

“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” (Benjamin Franklin)

Teaching skills and proof of teaching experience are not only an important precondition for an academic career but are also valuable key skills for almost all areas of work and life. Led by Prof. Wolfgang Hallet, professor of Teaching English Language and Literature at JLU, and in collaboration with other experienced teachers and teaching experts, the Teaching Centre is responsible for training prospective university teachers among GCSC postgraduates. Our teaching programme, designed to qualify doctoral students to teach, offers you not only the opportunity to become familiar with participant-based and task-based approaches to teaching and learning but also useful support in planning and running you own courses. The focus here is on developing professional teaching ability, analysing problems within teaching and learning, and reflecting upon you own teaching experience.

Curriculum

The Teaching Centre’s core programme is there to introduce you to the fundamentals of teaching and learning at university, with workshops such as “Designing Your Own Course Syllabi”, “University Teaching Methods” and “Activating Participants and Dealing with Problems”.

Alongside this core programme, we also offer a series of interdisciplinary courses on, for example, evaluation, using new media and grading written work. It is our principle to align the teaching we offer with the needs and interests of our students. This teaching also encompasses a range of discipline-specific courses.

Another important element of the teaching-qualifications programme is practice in various different ways of presenting academic subject matter, from a course to a conference to the defence of a thesis. In our workshops on developing performative skills, you will learn skills such as how to impart your knowledge to a particular target audience or how to present your own contributions in a professional manner in the framework, for example, of a simulated conference.

Learning to Teach − What we Offer

A programme of courses aimed at qualifying our PhD candidates for teaching
An introduction to participant-based and task-based approaches to teaching and learning as the optimal preparation for running your own seminars
Workshops on developing performative skills: learn how to give a good professional impression and address your subject matter to a particular target audience
Individual support and advice with the actual planning and running of your own courses
Experience in teaching through the active participation in a series of lectures in which doctoral candidates present core themes of their disciplines, aided by professors and the teaching centre staff
Support creating Teaching Portfolios to evaluate your own teaching and record your teaching experiences, teaching profile, and newly gained teaching skills for use in job applications and interviews
A homepage offering information on the Teaching Centre and texts available for download, such as PhD students’ tried and tested examples of syllabi and ideas for seminars
University Teaching Certificates as official Teaching Centre documentation of the skills you have gained