The Ars Legendi Prize, presented by 4ING, the umbrella organization of the engineering and informatics faculty associations, and the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, is awarded exclusively to outstanding and innovative university teachers in engineering and informatics at the member universities of 4ING. The award is endowed with 25.000 EUR. This years' awardee is Dr. Stephan Krusche, Chair for Applied Software Engineering (Prof. Bernd Brügge). He will receive his award in an online lecture on July 23, 2020.
The jury stated, that it is important to note that Stephan Krusche is not being honored for just one outstanding course, but rather for his overall commitment to teaching. He focuses on the success of all students, and not only the top performers, both in the introductory phase of their studies and in large-scale courses with up to 2.000 enrolled.
Stephan Krusche worked with his team to develop the learning management system Artemis. It resembles the better-known Moodle learning platform, but offers more functionality. The system is used to set problems for the students and give them immediate feedback on their results. This feedback not only shows whether a solution is correct, but also indicates where mistakes were made – a remarkable technical achievement.
To ensure that students receive the support they need, they are divided into 80 working groups, where the focus is on active participation. More than 50 tutorial leaders work with the students in small groups. They know their groups personally and can thus address individual problems more effectively. The team has also empirically demonstrated that this format benefits students' performance.
As well as addressing individual needs, the digital formats also support barrier-free content. A blind student was actually able to solve modelling tasks involving diagrams. She did this with a tablet application developed by Stephan Krusche and his team, which included drag-and-drop functionality to move elements. When she tapped a graphic element, the tablet vibrated and read out the element label.
Along with the Artemis platform, the Departmental Student Council of Mathematics, Physics, Informatics, which nominated Dr. Krusche for the Ars Legendi Prize for Excellence in University Teaching, also praised his commitment in developing the "iPraktikum". In this internship program, students gain insights into industrial software processes in cooperation with respected companies.
See the TUM press release