The German Association for Applied Mathematics and Mechanics - GAMM for short - set up this new technical committee in August 2021. The initiators and coordinators are Dr.-Ing. Thorsten Bartel and Prof. Dr. Tobias Haertel.

Our motivation and goals

Now that we have established the state of research in the field of didactics across all locations and thus also the basic associated concepts, our next goals are aimed at the concrete implementation of these methods, also and in particular in accordance with the OER (Open Educational Resources) concept. The long-term goal remains the definition of quality standards for competence-oriented teaching.

• Following our workshop "New ways in teaching" (see below), we are now starting to prepare for the first sessions in our new section on didactics at the GAMM Annual Meeting 2025 in Poznan.
• In parallel, we will now prepare and carry out our publication in the GAMM book series LAMM - Lecture Notes in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics .
• We are also continuing our efforts to network with other groups pursuing similar goals. We have already succeeded in this with the specialist group headed by Prof. Thomas Skill "University Mathematics Teaching and Learning" of the German Mathematical Society (DMV).

If you feel addressed by these points, we would be delighted to hear from you at fa_didaktikgammorg.

• A guide to defining learning objectives

The Young Faculty Group of IFToMM (International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science) hosted the first symposium on "Emerging Fields in Mechanism and Machine Science" from November 19 to 21, 2024. The organizers invited us to contribute to "Teaching and Didactics" at this online conference, which we of course gladly accepted. The slides of our presentation entitled "On methods to motivate students to self-organized learning and to enable them to acquire future skills" can be viewed here:

Presentation slides as .pdf

The seventh meeting was all about progressive ideas for increasing motivation in teaching. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christina Völlmecke presented her project "GAMEchanics - Mechanics meets Gamification", in which a physical and virtual escape room with puzzles from the field of mechanics was developed. Although the target group of the project is rather high school students and the general public, the "puzzles" and basic concepts can be easily adapted to study content.

Presentation slides as .pdf

On June 10/11, 2024, the workshop "New ways in teaching: From teaching to learning events " took place at TU Dortmund University in the "Makerspace Engineering Education" of the Engineering Didactics department. After getting to know each other and the keynote lecture by Tobias Haertel, topics such as "student motivation", "competence orientation" and "AI in teaching" were discussed intensively. A short visual summary of the workshop can also be found in this video.

Once we have collected and sorted the material, we will make it available in the near future.

Many thanks to GAMM for their considerable financial support of the workshop.

Quote from a participant:

"I came to your workshop with no clear expectations, except maybe to get some ideas about how to use modern technologies in teaching. Instead, I understood for the first time what exactly should change in order to deliver effective teaching. [...] These concepts should be known to every teacher! I have now learned them and I am very grateful for that."

Our sixth meeting focused on two presentations:

• Benjamin Marussig (Institute of Construction Mechanics, TU Graz) presented "mechpy", an impressive tool that has been developed at the Institute of Applied Mechanics over the last few years. With this Python-based and moodle-linked program, individual problems are created for each student, which can also be automatically corrected using STACK.
• Thorsten Bartel (Institute of Mechanics, TU Dortmund University) presented a newly established concept in which face-to-face courses are combined with methods based on constructivist learning theories. In particular, students are encouraged and motivated to directly apply the theories and methods discussed through "Do-It-Yourself" units during the classroom sessions.
  Presentation slides as .pdf
  Presentation slides as .pptx

With the participation of our technical committee, GAMM experienced a novelty on its 100th anniversary: for the first time, a mini-symposium was dedicated solely to the topic of "Didactics and modern teaching". On the one hand, the aim was to explain the basic concepts of didactics to the audience. On the other hand, concrete implementations in the sense of "best practice" examples were presented. The speakers are listed below together with their abstracts and presentation slides.

• T. Bartel (TU Dortmund University): Abstract / Presentation
• D. Kochmann (ETH Zurich), A. Franze (HTW Dresden): Abstract / Presentation
• L. Burr (Ulm University): Abstract
• U. Feldmann, S. Franz (TU Dresden): Abstract / Presentation
• M.H. Gfrerer, B. Marussig, K. Maitz, M.M. Bangerl (TU Graz): Abstract
• H. Wessels (TU Braunschweig): Abstract / Presentation

If you are interested in the content of our technical committee, please feel free to contact us by e-mail. Participation in our regular meetings is possible and welcome at any time - you do not have to be a permanent member of the technical committee.

The technical committee was founded in August 2021 with the following members

Prof. Dr. Daniel Balzani (Ruhr University Bochum), Dr. Thorsten Bartel (TU Dortmund University), Prof. Dr. Timm Faulwasser (TU Dortmund University), Prof. Dr. Andreas Franze (Dresden University of Applied Sciences), Prof. Dr. Daniel Juhre (OVG University Magdeburg), Prof. Dr. Philipp Junker (Leibniz University Hannover), Prof. Dr. Marc-André Keip (University of Stuttgart), Prof. Dr. Björn Kiefer (TU Freiberg), Prof. Dr. Dorothee Knees (University of Kassel), Prof. Dr. Dennis Kochmann (ETH Zurich), Prof. Dr. Detlef Kuhl (University of Kassel), Dr. Patrick Kurzeja (TU Dortmund), Prof. Dr. Felix Lindner (University of Kassel), Dr.-Ing. Christoph Meier (TU Munich), Prof. Dr. Andreas Meister (University of Kassel), Prof. Dr. Julia Mergheim (TU Erlangen-Nuremberg), Prof. Dr. Ralf Müller (TU Kaiserslautern), Akad. Dir. Dr. Martin Scheer (TU Dortmund University), Prof. Dr. Moritz Schulze-Darup (TU Dortmund University), Prof. Dr. Andrea Walther (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

E-mail: fa_didaktikgammorg
Phone: +49 231 755 2668