Teaching Strategy
My approach to teaching rests on three pillars: creating a natural critical learning environment, offering opportunities for continuous peer review and reflecting and stimulating academic debate. For the creation of natural critical learning environments, I encourage independent and autonomous preparation and work inside and outside the classroom. Opportunities for continuous peer reflection are supported for example by in-class double blind peer reviews, in which students read and comment on each other’s essays or by using wiki-systems for collaborative paper writing that are public and open for the whole class. I stimulate academic debate by using not one long, but two or three very short in-class student presentations that use independent material to be able to take a stand. To develop an active learning culture continuously, I constantly evaluate and develop my teaching methods. If possible, I evaluate twice a semester: one oral mid-semester review in order to adjust the ongoing course, one end-of-semester evaluation to monitor course success. In 2010, I visited the “Best Teachers Summer Institute” in West Orange, NJ, USA, to discuss opportunities and tools for creating a fair, critical and equal culture of learning. I have been on the scientific advisory board of a service center for media infrastructure for research and teaching at Bielefeld University and successfully applied for and managed the project “eLearning Plug-Ins” (Bielefeld University, “Future Teaching Initiatives”, 2009-2011) to develop flexible and versatile social media tools for teaching seminars and lectures in the social sciences.
Course Formats
- Basics contains introductory courses as well as mentored self-learning groups. Mentored self-learning groups can be used to read canonical and contemporary texts, as well as for projects aimed at first empirical insights in past, current and future trends and issues in the development of digital technologies and infrastructures. While introductory courses are held on a weekly basis with a continuously advancing syllabus, self-learning groups work with a combination of a set of tasks that groups of students fulfill independently with regular feedback plenary and mentoring hours.
- Controversies is a collection of courses both on selected controversial debates in social and media theory and current empirical as well as publicly relevant controversies regarding the implementation, use and modification of digital technologies. Both can work either with a course format that tries to map a controversy in a collaborative project using wikis and mind mappings that grow from week to week, or with a format that resembles clubs for open and formal debate in which groups of students take different positions in their in-class presentations.
- Research training takes place on three levels: methods, research practice and writing. Training in “methods” contains overviews and advanced courses in qualitative research methods, collaborative ethnography as well as digital methods. “Research practice” operates with workshops for interview training, writing fieldnotes or handling data and interpretation. “Writing” exercises works with student peer review and instructional feedback and focusses on the textual, visual and digital presentation of research.
Teaching Record
English
| Summer 2018: | This Ain’t No Knowledge Society, with Nikolaus Pöchhacker STS STEM – Computer Science |
TUM |
| Winter 2017: | Data Culture, Governance and Ethics of Technology Summer School | Twente |
| Block: Media in “Technology and Society” | TUM | |
| Summer 2017: | Mapping Controversies, with Dr. Laurie Waller Algorithmic and Organizational Control in Digital Societies, with Dr. Uli Meyer, Tobias Drewlani and Eva-Maria Raffetseder |
TUM |
| Winter 2016: | Making Mess with Methods, with Peter Müller and Silvan Pollozek Social Science Hackathon, with Dr. Marcus Burkhardt Data/Science/Society, with Dr. Marcus Burkhardt and Bernhard Maier |
TUM |
| Summer 2015: | Science, Technology, Media | TUM |
| Winter 2010: | Where are the missing masses? | Bielefeld |
| Winter 2008: | Science and Technology Studies 2 | Bielefeld |
| Summer 2008: | Science and Technology Studies 1 | Bielefeld |
| Summer 2007: | Marshall McLuhan: Understanding Media | Bielefeld |
| Summer 2006: | Pragmatism, Functionalism and Institutionalism | Hamburg |
German
| Summer 2018: | Einführung in die Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung (STS Intro) Digitale Kulturen und vernetzte Gesellschaften (Digital Culture) Politische Technologien – Technologien des Politischen (Technology and Politics) Kontroversen kartieren, Pro-/Hauptseminar (Mapping Controversies) |
Passau |
| Winter 2017: | Technik und Gesellschaft (Technology and Society) Einführung in die Actor-Network Theory (ANT Intro) Ethnographische Zugänge zur Techniksoziologie (STS and Ethnography) Die Berechnung der Welt (Calculating the World) |
Passau |
| Kalkulative Kulturen (Calculating Culture) | Luzern | |
| Summer 2016: | Reading „An Inquiry into Modes of Existence“, with Bernhard Maier | TUM |
| Winter 2015: | Medien, Infrastrukturen, Software (Media, Infrastructure, Software), with Dr. Marcus Burkhardt Technokratie und technischer Staat (Technocracy and the Technical State), with Dr. Julian Müller |
TUM/LMU |
| Summer 2015: | Wissenschaft und Technik in digitalen Gesellschaften (Science & Technology in Digital Societies) Blockseminar Videoanalysen (Video Analysis Advanced Seminar) |
TUM |
| Summer 2014: | Praxeologien (Practice Theories in Sociology) | TU Berlin |
| Winter 2013: | Actor-Network-Theory: Tiefenbohrungen (Actor-Network-Theory – Drilling Deep) with Valentin Janda | TU Berlin |
| Winter 2012: | Technik und Sozialtheorie (Technology and Social Theory) Sozialwissenschaftliche Technikforschung (Social Studies of Technology) |
TU Berlin |
| Summer 2012: | Laborstudien (Lab Studies) | Bielefeld |
| Winter 2011: | Einführung in die Mediensoziologie (Introduction to Media Sociology) | Bielefeld |
| Summer 2011: | Ethnographie, Medien- und Techniksoziologie (Ethnography, Media and Technology Studies) Medientechnologien und -infrastrukturen (Media: Technologies and Infrastructures) |
Bielefeld |
| Winter 2010: | Einführung in die Mediensoziologie (Introduction to Media Sociology) Lehrforschung: Ranking, Index, Quote, mit Frank Oberzaucher (Grounded Theory, Iconography, Ethnography) |
Bielefeld |
| Summer 2010: | Interobjektivität neuer Medien (Interactivity and Interobjectivity of New Media) Lehrforschung: Ranking, Index, Quote (Grounded Theory, Iconography, Ethnography), with Frank Oberzaucher |
Bielefeld |
| Winter 2009: | Einführung in die Mediensoziologie (Introduction to Media Sociology) | Bielefeld |
| Summer 2009: | Soziologie der Dinge (Sociology of Things) Medienwandel und Moderne (Media and Modernity) Methoden der Medienforschung (Methods of Media Research), with PD. Dr. Udo Göttlich |
Bielefeld |
| Winter 2008: | Einführung in die Mediensoziologie (Introduction to Media Sociology) | Bielefeld |
| Summer 2008: | Turn, turn, turn: Mediensoziologie und die Cultural turns (Media Sociology and the Cultural Turns) | Bielefeld |
| Winter 2007: | Einführung in die Mediensoziologie (Introduction to Media Sociology) Medientheorien als Theorien der Moderne (Media Theories as Theories of Modernity) |
Bielefeld |
| Winter 2008: | Einführung in die Mediensoziologie (Introduction to Media Sociology) | Bielefeld |
| Summer 2007: | Materialität und Medialität (Material Media) | Bielefeld |
| Winter 2006: | Theorie/Geschichte: Medientechnologien (Theory/History of Media Technologies) Medientheorie und Sozialtheorie (Media Theory and Social Theory) |
Bielefeld |
| Winter 2005: | Klassische Texte der Soziologie – Französischer Positivismus, Verstehende Soziologie und Kritische Theorie (Sociology Classics – Positivism, Interpretative Sociology, Critical Theory) | Hamburg |
| Summer 2005: | Berger und Luckmann: Die gesellschaftliche Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit (Theories of Society I: Berger & Luckmann) John R. Searle: Die Konstruktion der gesellschaftlichen Wirklichkeit (Theories of Society II: John R. Searle), both with Prof. Dr. Max Miller |
Hamburg |
| Winter 2004: | Niklas Luhmann: Organisation und Entscheidung (Niklas Luhmann: Organizations and Decisions) Diskursanalyse sozialer Konflikte II (Social Conflicts and Discourse Analysis II), both with Prof. Dr. Max Miller |
Hamburg |
| Summer 2004: | Diskursanalyse sozialer Konflikte I (Social Conflicts and Discourse Analysis I) Einführung in die Soziologie II (Sociology Introduction II – Modern Approaches), both with Prof. Dr. Max Miller |
Hamburg |
| Winter 2003: | Einführung in die Soziologie I (Sociology Introduction I – Classics), with Prof. Dr. Max Miller | Hamburg |