Extraordinary Courses

Information available so far in German.

We are always trying to integrate a digital teaching format when it helps to convey the required content. The new forms of didactic methods should not replace the tried-and-tested teaching formats, but they should complement them in a useful way. This is a chance for students to learn about and work with digital formats. An example of such a teaching format is the “internship course” for the students of the Franco-German course 'International and European Governance', which is offered by the chair every semester. The asynchronous course enables the content in specific time units matching the progress before, during and after the internship. Therefore, it ensures a successful transfer between theoretical knowledge and application-oriented content of the compulsory internship. Next to this, the course offers synchronous introductory units and group-based tasks for including the advantages of exchange and discussion even in the ‘digital classroom’.

Several seminars at our chair are explicitly based on the concept of "research-based learning", which belongs to the group of constructivist-oriented forms of teaching and learning. This is a format in which students do independent research during the course of the semester (or across semesters), they develop a research question with associated hypotheses, discuss suitable concepts and methods, and finally test these empirically "in the field". Students practice producing scientific findings that may also be of interest to third parties. The project seminar "International and European Governance", for example, explicitly follows this teaching-learning format.

Sustainability plays an essential role in the courses offered by our chair. Many of the fields of research that the team is working on can also be found in teaching. In the past, for example, there have been seminars on sustainability in Münster, sustainable consumption, environment, and citizenship or sustainability and participation. The seminars take a critical look at existing structures, approaches, and political concepts of sustainability.
Another important aspect in courses with a sustainability focus is the interdisciplinary nature inherent in sustainability. In the summer semester 2016, the interdisciplinary module "Bieconomy" was offered for the first time to students of the Master's programme in Biotechnology in the Faculty of Biology. Prof'in Doris Fuchs and her colleague Carolin Bohn gave the students of this module a political science perspective on bioeconomics in order to enable them to critically question the sustainability potential of bioeconomic processes and the role of acceptance and corporate power in this context.
Practical relevance also plays an important role in many courses. This is ensured, for example, by integrating the ZIN-Brotzeitkolloquium into seminars. In addition to scientific experts from various disciplines, representatives from civil society initiatives and other practical activities often have their say in this lecture series. These impulses are then taken up and further deepened in the seminars.