International STEM Summer School

The throat is a bit dry, the jacket not anymore … It was worth it! At the invitation of the Donors‘ Association for German Science, Aline Bergert and Aleksandra Mansfeld (student tutor during the Summer School) presented our best practice project, the STEM Summer School, at the ‘MINTernational Conference’ of the Donors‘ Association yesterday.

 

The idea and, above all, the implementation have received a great deal of recognition, both on the part of the Donors‘ Association, as well as by the representatives of other university leaders and meeting guests.

It works: internationalization and practice orientation and digitization. The TU Bergakademie Freiberg, or the media center, was already awarded in April last year together with eight other universities.

Based on the findings of the joint workshop with the University of Paderborn, the team has developed interesting ideas, e.g. regarding curriculum development, language training, participant recruitment, etc. We hope that these innovative ideas will find their way into current projects.

By the way: We are called upon to apply for a follow-up project …

The presentation is ready, the posters are printed, the materials are packed … we are very well prepared for our workshop on October 13th in Berlin. Our sponsors of the Donors‘ Association for German Science, the Daimler Fund and the Daimler and Benz Foundation have invited us to present our first international STEM Summer School. The goal is the presentation of exemplary concepts for the internationalization of STEM subjects. In a joint workshop with the project of the University of Paderborn, we present our results of the first Summer School course and discuss discovered potentials and challenges with the participants. This exchange will hopefully give us a lot of input for the second round of the STEM Summer School from April to June 2017.

To our delight we were praised for our international STEM Summer School by both sites: by the participants as well as by the consultants of the cooperating companies.

Have a look at a short statement from Alex Heiden, our consultant from SEM Fire and Rescue Pty Ltd (Austalia) here:

After the final event of the first round of the international STEM Summer School we asked our participants to give feedback. Therefore we met for an interactive meeting at the virtual classroom. Moderated by the project coordinator the participants assessed the Summer School live during this meeting.

The following diagram shows how our participants evaluated the Summer School in general. Every participant valued by putting a symbol e.g. star, hook, cross in prepared graphics (5 = very satified, 1 = not at all satisfied).