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English or German? Deutsch oder Englisch?

Should we teach in English or German? Or both? But then, which class in which language?

This question is at the center of an on-going debate, and it is a hard question to answer. Here is how the Open Source Research (and Teaching) Group is looking at the situation.

The fundamental assumption is that we (German Universities) want to attract students who are not native German speakers. There are two main reasons: (a) It is a large market (for education) and (b) Germany needs new and fresh blood from abroad. English is the international language and the main common denominator. Spanish never made it there and Chinese is a long way off and might never make it either. German, of course, is a remote also-ran.

There are basically two conflicting forces:

Continue reading English or German? Deutsch oder Englisch?

Why We Teach The Way We Do

Today, a colleague confided in me:

“Dirk, if I were a student, I wouldn’t attend your classes. I never liked to speak up and would rather cram for an exam at the end of the semester rather than open my mouth in class.”

Well, that was quite the bummer. However:

We teach to make the most of your time: To achieve the highest possible learning in the shortest amount of time. Your (student) time is precious, and so is ours. For that, we encourage active class participation. To make this clear, parts of your grades depend on that participation.

Look at the following increasing steps of class engagement:

Continue reading Why We Teach The Way We Do

Impressions from @acbullinger and Uta Renken’s Social Research Collaboration Talk in Nailing your Thesis

Update 2012-03-14: Removed photos based on lecturer request.

Today, Angelika C. Bullinger and Uta Renken lectured in Nailing your Thesis (NYT), our research lab course. They presented a recent research paper of theirs; topically fitting, it was on social research networks and collaboration between scientists. The initial presentation was followed by an in-depth discussion of research method and results as well as the research and paper writing process. Please find some photo impressions below. Thank you, Frau Bullinger and Renken, for teaching us!

Continue reading Impressions from @acbullinger and Uta Renken’s Social Research Collaboration Talk in Nailing your Thesis

Wolfgang Mauerer on Statistics in Nailing your Thesis

Today, Wolfgang Mauerer of Siemens Corporate Technology lectured on statistics and regressions, providing students in Nailing your Thesis with a refresher of the math necessary for our open source analytics work. Thank you, Wolfgang, for your continued help!

Continue reading Wolfgang Mauerer on Statistics in Nailing your Thesis

Nicole Kimmelmann on Grounded Theory and Interview Analysis

Today in Nailing your Thesis we were happy to have Prof. Nicole Kimmelmann of FAU’s own WiSo faculty as a guest speaker. Her topic was Grounded Theory and specifically, interview analysis. Since several students chose interview analysis as their class thesis, we expect this to have been very useful! Below, please find the usual photo impressions.

Continue reading Nicole Kimmelmann on Grounded Theory and Interview Analysis

Class Schedules of OSR Group Led Teaching

Here a list of (permanent) links that point to the schedules of classes we teach.

Code Type Clickable Copyable Full Name Status
FAU PSWT Lecture Schedule http://goo.gl/0fy1T Applied Software Engineering Every WS
FAU ADPP Lecture Schedule Advanced Design and Programming Practices In Planning
FAU NYT Lab Course Schedule http://goo.gl/VqoFO Nailing your (Research) Thesis Every WS
FAU AMOS Lab Course Schedule http://goo.gl/BZpU8 Agile Methods and Open Source Every SS
FAU ARCH Seminar Schedule http://goo.gl/ZXJjg Software Architecture Every WS
FAU PROD Seminar Schedule http://goo.gl/tTAI0 Product Management Every SS
FAU UXD Seminar Schedule User Experience Design In Planning
FAU FIRM Seminar Schedule http://goo.gl/Xpz90 The Software Firm Irregular

All of them are world-readable Google Spreadsheets.

Upcoming WS 2011/12 Teaching: Description and Materials Links

Hello everyone! We created the StudOn sections for our WS 2011/12 teaching. Right now they are empty, but we are already working on filling them up.

Please bookmark them and be sure to sign up early!