Teaching award for Janina Kirsch
Janina Kirsch
The senate of the university has announced this year’s recipients of its teaching awards. The prize is given to educators whose courses are outstanding both in their content as well as their didactic value, or make use of innovative teaching methods. In 2011, the three awardees are Jan Korvink (IMTEK), Bent Gebert (German Seminar) and Janina Kirsch, the Teaching & Training Coordinator of the Bernstein Center Freiburg.
Janina received the award in recognition of her course “Das menschliche Gehirn – Ein Mal- und Bastelkurs” (‘The Human Brain – A Course in Drawing and Handicraft’). As the university senate points out, Janina successfully introduces Bachelor students in a very concrete way to the anatomy of the brain and the function of its different areas. The course, as its name indicates, favours a ‘hands-on’ approach to understanding the brain. The modelling of different structures of the brain with plasticine is an important part of this concrete approach, and the same is true for the visualisation of neuronal links through strings and pearls.
With her concept, Janina enables the students to overcome their initial inhibitions to approach this highly complex topic, and to literally get a ‘grasp’ on brain anatomy. The course is also highly interactive: Students have to research and give presentations during the course – a way of guided self-study that increases their ability to memorise the course’s content.
The relaxed and communicative atmosphere also allows the students to turn one of their first encounters with neuroscience into a truly positive experience.
Press release of the University (in German)
