ETH Learning and Teaching Journal

Journal: ETH Learning and Teaching Journal

Publisher

ETH Zurich, Educational Development and Technology

ISSN

2624-7984
2624-7992

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Publications 1 - 10 of 27

How to develop and implement teaching projects in outdoor education
Thurn, Christian Maximilian; Zwyssig, Adrian; Gubelmann, Hanspeter; et al. (2025)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal
Learning through projects can raise interest and motivation, and support the construction of competencies, disciplinary, and interdisciplinary knowledge via working on real-life problems in realistic settings. One form of project-based learning is outdoor education, that is, situating learning and instruction in settings outside the regular classroom. We present a course for students in the teacher education program at ETH Zurich that implements project-based education on two layers: the course itself is project-based, and the pre-service teachers create project-based outdoor teaching units during the course. We describe how we balance freedom and guidance, and scaffolding in the course design. In addition, we report how students respond to and evaluate our course, and discuss challenges and opportunities for lecturers. By presenting sample projects and insights from the implementation and continuous development of the project-based course, we aim to inspire and guide lecturers at ETH Zurich and other universities who consider implementing project-based courses in their teaching.
“I remember your lecture”: role-playing games and unconventional teaching reinforce learning outcomes
Steiner, Eliane; Garcia Ulloa, John Alejandro; Ghazoul, Jaboury; et al. (2020)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal
To familiarize students with today’s challenges in the field of ecosystem management, the environmental sciences master program offers a course for students called Foundations of Ecosystem Management. The aim of this course is to create an effective learning experience and develop critical thinking capacities for future natural resource managers and academics. The course is structured into various parts where students first elaborate on the definition of the theoretical foundations and concepts. In a next step, they use this definition to work on real-world case studies. During their groupwork, they construct a role-playing game that addresses the most prominent issues in the system and thereby learn to understand and deal with the complexity of the management issues. At the same time, students are trained in soft skills like teamwork, self-reflection, debriefing, and facilitation. In this paper, we present the structure of the course and results from an online survey done by students from the last 5 years. We assessed how well former students remember the course and the theory they learnt and how they perceived the teaching approach. We found positive results: students appreciate the different teaching approach and most of the students, including students from earlier cohorts, state that they still remember the concepts. Students report that they have applied the concepts and approaches from the course in other contexts outside the classroom. We, as teaching staff, reflect on the course, the learning experience, and the results from the online survey, and present four teaching principles that underline what has worked in the course: i) self-authorship, ii) education through active and experiential learning, iii) competence-oriented learning on soft skills: self-reflection, teamwork, and facilitation, and finally iv) inter-cultural learning.
Integrating stakeholders in project-based transdisciplinary teaching and learning – the case of ‘Tackling Environmental Problems‘
Mader, Marlene; Rapo, Carole; Pohl, Christian Erik (2025)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal
In this reflection on a teaching practice, we present how we implement project-based transdisciplinary teaching and learning in the Bachelor of Environmental Science (hereafter BSc) course ‘Tackling Environmental Problems’ (‘Umweltproblemlösen’ in German, abbreviated as UPL hereafter) at ETH Zurich. First, we focus on the question of how stakeholders are involved in transdisciplinary higher education courses. Then, we present which stakeholders we involve in UPL and which roles they take. A (non-exhaustive) literature review of transdisciplinary courses in other institutions has shown that it is often not explicitly described which stakeholders, and especially in which roles, they are involved in a project-based transdisciplinary course. In UPL, we distinguish between stakeholders at the course level of the case study and stakeholders at the project level who are approached by the students for development of their sustainability projects. Finally, we discuss why we integrate stakeholders in our course and link this to the development of transdisciplinary competences. We conclude with a reflection on the challenges and opportunities of the stakeholders, lecturers and students, as well as experiences, reflections, and feedback from eight years of running this course.
Teaching architecture through an energy and climate lens
Hischier, Illias; Grobe, Lars Oliver; Waibel, Christoph; et al. (2025)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal
Despite the increasing societal awareness of the climate crisis, considerations of outdoor and indoor climate, energy consumption and generation, and the environmental impact of material choices still represent a niche in architectural practice. Given the urgency of the issue, addressing these topics needs to be integrated in architectural design. In this work, we first describe a build-up of teaching formats and position them in view of learners’ competence development in architectural design through an energy and climate lens. We identify opportunities to refine our teaching instruments further and improve the learners' ability to independently integrate topics related to energy, emissions, climate, and comfort in the practice of design projects. We end with an outlook of an idealized build-up of these competencies across an architecture curriculum.
Laboratory practice energy efficent production
Zimmermann, Nico; Hernández Becerro, Pablo; Blaser, Philip; et al. (2018)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal ~ ETH Learning and Teaching Fair 2018 Proceedings
Graduate collective in earth sciences: Promoting network building among doctoral students
Welte, Caroline; Gilli, Adrian; Hemingway, Jordon (2023)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal
Doctoral students need to acquire a large skillset to meet the numerous and diverse challenges they face during their studies. Several factors can have a positive influence on how students navigate their doctoral projects independent of their supervisor’s commitment. These include informal networks of doctoral students that are regarded as key components to scientific success. Although there are opportunities for building informal networks within individual research groups, few opportunities exist at the institute and department level. Several research groups within the Department of Earth Sciences (D-ERDW) gathered to launch the Graduate Collective in the spring semester 2022. In a series of four seminars and ten workshops, we made use of the common thematic framework to provide 16 doctoral students with the tools and resources they need to navigate their graduate studies. Students worked closely together on the various topics in groups of different sizes, thus enabling them to build networks with co-students from related research fields. In addition, informal networking events were organized that allowed the students to deepen and stabilize their new connections with co-students. Students could earn 2 credit points for taking part in this course. We evaluate and reflect the effect of our course on network building based observations made during the course. Overall, the results underline our hypothesis that a teaching format installed between the department and group level enables participants to build networks of interpersonal support.
AEther: A research and writing workshop in Science and Technology Studies
Güttler, Nils; Rhyner, Niki; Stadler, Max (2018)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal
The aim of this teaching project is to design and develop an innovative, internetbased science magazine in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS): www.aether.ethz.ch. Students have the opportunity to critically engage with the future of digital scientific publishing, both conceptually and practically.
Sensitizing future teachers to psychological research on gender and STEM
Berkowitz Biran, Michal; Braas, Thomas; Thurn, Christian Maximilian (2022)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal ~ Diversity and Inclusion in Teaching and Learning
What leads less women to pursue STEM careers? What does research find about differences in girls’ and boys’ educational trajectories? Students and faculty may have heard about gender bias, the leaky pipeline, gender stereotypes, or gender differences in the brain, but it is often difficult to grasp the underlying complexity of these topics. As social scientists in a technical university, we think that learning more closely about research in this field is helpful in developing a balanced and critical perspective. We have thus developed a course on gender issues in education and STEM for students in the teacher education program at ETH Zurich. In this paper, we first introduce some of the main issues in the context of gender and STEM, around which our course is designed. We then describe the pillars of our course. The course is interactive, with students presenting and critically discussing psychological and educational research. We walk students through the various controversies in the field: the nature-nurture question, gender differences vs. similarities, biases vs. interests, gender stereotypes and potential interventions. In a final assignment, students in small groups integrate several papers into a blog-post. Finally, we describe how students respond to our course, and discuss the challenges we as lecturers experience throughout.
Yes, we can: Empowering 21st century skills in a large introductory classroom through project-based learning
Köhler, Katja; Tobler, Samuel (2025)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal ~ Learning through projects and practical work
Fostering ‘21st Century Skills’ is becoming increasingly important in view of the rapidly changing world, with transferable competencies such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication being crucial to succeed in work and society. Adapting university teaching to these requirements necessitates the development of appropriate curricula, courses, and teaching materials, as well as examinations that can adequately measure these competencies. Various teaching methods are suited to convey transferable competencies, in particular student-centred methods like project-based learning (PBL), where learners work collaboratively on authentic problems. Many studies demonstrated that PBL improves understanding, team performance, motivation, and critical thinking, in contrast to conventional teaching formats where students are exposed to the material more passively with few opportunities to actively apply concepts and question them critically. The flipped classroom model can also contribute to fostering ‘21st Century Skills’ as shifting knowledge transfer to self-study creates space in courses for activities that train social and personal skills through discussions, group work, or PBL. Promoting transferable skills is especially challenging in bachelor programs where courses are usually attended by many students with heterogeneous background knowledge, posing major challenges for lecture design. Thus, traditional, teacher-centred methods are often the format of choice. Here, we describe the development of a flipped classroom with a particular focus on project-based activities training social and personal skills for a large introductory biology lecture. By transferring part of the knowledge acquisition to the self-study phase, in-class sessions became free for project-based group work where students design experiments to study the genetic basis of diseases. At the end of the course, the groups present their projects in a poster session to their peers, the lecturers, and experts. Besides applying the knowledge acquired in the course, the group projects allow students to work on ‘real-world problems’ relevant to their field of study. Tutors (student teaching assistants) support students in their projects by providing feedback, clarifying questions, and evaluating the final project outcomes. The interdisciplinary nature of the project promotes problem-solving skills and critical thinking, while the didactic setting allows students to train their social competencies (cooperation & teamwork). Importantly, the group phase also impacts the skills development of the tutors, as they can expand their skills in the social and personal areas as well. Implementing PBL to promote 21st Century Skills’ in large, heterogenous classes represents several challenges including infrastructural constraints, organizational complexity, and student motivation. This paper describes how a flipped classroom approach can support the development of competencies by PBL and suggests solutions to address challenges associated with this teaching format. Our analysis of student feedback collected over multiple years indicates that the project-based approach is effective in key aspects, such as group productivity, student-tutor interaction, and student motivation, and suggests that for certain student groups, fostering a stronger sense of project relatedness remains an area for future improvement.
Digital pedagogy for data-driven unsolicited urban design
Pagani, Marco; Walczak, Michael; Klumpner, Hubert (2025)
ETH Learning and Teaching Journal
As urban environments evolve with increasing complexity, urban planning must adapt by often responding to unsolicited demands rather than to commissioned, structured work. This paper explores the integration of digital tools – including Digital Twins – into the architectural curriculum at ETH Zurich, aiming to bridge the gap between data-driven site analysis and data-driven design. The study focuses on the application of these methods in real-world contexts,such as the Urban Transformation Project Sarajevo, where students from ETH Zurich and the University of Sarajevo applied the acquired knowledge to the development of a new Urban Plan for Sarajevo. The impact of the newly introduced digital pedagogies is investigated within existing lectures and through innovative learning environments, such as hackathons for architects. The outcomes highlight the potential of digital literacy in supporting future urban planners. By introducing digital tools through project-based learning, students were enabled to connect data-driven site analysis with data-driven unsolicited design processes, fostering a more holistic understanding of urban planning.

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Journal: ETH Learning and Teaching Journal

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