Offer for prospective elite teachers

Studying in Bayreuth Bayreuth enrolled for STEM subjects. The best student teachers for STEM subjects at the University of Bayreuth have the opportunity to be accepted into the ELITE study programme MINT-Lehramt Plus. The programme focuses on targeted support for gifted students within the Elite Network Bavaria. The universities of Bayreuth and Würzburg work together in this degree programme to support particularly gifted and capable students of the subjects biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics or physics for the teaching profession at grammar schools.

Students currently enrolled in the ELITE programme have a very special opportunity this summer semester: Ten students are allowed to participate in the EU Summer School for STEM teachers from all over Europe in Marathon/Athens. "The conceptual framework there is our "Artificial Intelligence Project" (EU: DISCOVERY SPACE), which is also funding this practical module," explains Prof. Dr. Franz X. Bogner, who, together with Dr. Tessa Baierl, has taken on the coordination and management of the Summer School module. "Hopefully it won't be a one-off project, because it will allow us not only to use artificial intelligence in the classroom, but also to help shape the way artificial intelligence is used on a concrete example," says Marvin Drechsel, one of the Bayreuth students.

Each student has already taken on a concrete teaching topic in advance, which will be prepared for later AI inclusion in the project. The task of each individual is to design practicable teaching scenarios according to PISA criteria for three requirement levels (good/intermediate/low performance), which are successively prepared by the project's software developers for AI teaching in the classroom. All topics are curriculum-compliant, ranging from the Doppler effect (passing "Martins horn") or DNA molecule structure to (macro/micro) plastic pollution and the complex future topic of climate change (sea level simulation, ocean acidification or ecological footprint). For one week, the student teachers can immerse themselves in an international summer school in Marathon, which this time welcomes a good 250 STEM teachers from all over Europe (whose funding is also secured through various EU Erasmus+ projects from the entire STEM field). In the concrete model, just as many STEM teachers from Portugal and Greece are working together with the (German) ten teaching hours.

"The D-Space Summer School gave me a great insight into the most modern teaching concepts behind the dreamlike backdrop of Marathon, as well as many concrete ideas for implementing them in practice," says Maximilian Helbig. Theresa Rupprecht also learned a lot in Greece for being a teacher in the future: "The Summer School on AI integration in the classroom will broaden my understanding of artificial intelligence, especially how to effectively integrate it into my teaching, while at the same time I will exchange ideas with international experts to learn about more innovative approaches."

An information event for interested students will now take place in July 2023: