TUM Teaching Endowment Fund

The TUM Teaching Endowment Fund seeks to inspire creative new concepts for teaching and examination to promote the continued development and enhancement of the formats, structures and content of instruction and assessment – from fine tuning and redesigning courses and examination methods to proposing new forms of practical and laboratory courses.

Funded Projects (in German)
Blog articles about funded projects

Target Group

TUM fosters creativity and innovation in teaching. Graphic: Dörrscheidt

All TUM community members who are engaged in teaching activities are eligible to apply:

Professors
Nonprofessorial teaching staff
Assistant lecturers
Nonacademic staff charged with developing new teaching concepts and formats

Applications are open to individuals or teams, but only one project may be submitted per applicant. Course programs that are subject to a fee (such as continuing education courses, for example) are not eligible for funding.

Sponsorship

The fund is part of TUM Agenda Lehre, backed by the "Qualitätspakt Lehre" (Quality Pact for Teaching), a federal program for the improvement of conditions of study and of teaching quality.

The TUM Teaching Endowment Fund sponsors teaching and assessment projects aiming to enhance, refine, or redesign the content, formats, and structures of instruction or examination, or to introduce creative new ideas. This includes a wide range of innovative curricula and curricular elements, such as:

New approaches to student advising and supervising
Course restructuring or redesign
E-learning elements or units
Innovative examination methods, such as the parcours
Development of traditional assessment methods toward competency-based examination
Optimization of practical examinations vis-a-vis learning outcomes
Tutorial and practical course formats

The TUM Teaching Endowment Fund supports projects with concrete proposals for teaching and assessment that are not part of a “standard” curriculum. The amount of funding varies according to the scope and requirements of individual projects. Proposals must detail the grounds for the funding request. Please note, only funds for personnel costs may be requested.

TUM professors may apply for a one-semester sabbatical to carry out projects within the scope of the TUM Teaching Endowment Fund. In this case, funds from the award may be used as compensation. For more information, please refer to Semester's Leave for Teaching.

Selection Criteria

All qualifying entries will be evaluated by a central award jury, based on the following criteria:

Completeness and coherence of the project proposal
Long-term added value compared to existing courses, as demonstrated by the project's
- experimentation with, or implementation of, innovative teaching concepts and methods
- advancement of existing instructional approaches
- incorporation of concepts, structures, didactic materials, or experiential methods that can be utilized on a long-term basis
- transferability to other academic contexts or subject areas
Attention to the key success factors in effective instruction, such as outcome-based teaching, skill-based teaching, decentralized learning and problem-solving, experiential education, and activation and visualization techniques
References to current research
Efficiency, i.e., a favorable cost-benefit ratio
A feasible implementation concept

Application Procedure

All applications must be submitted to the TUM Academic and Student Affairs Office, via e-mail to lehrfonds@lehren.tum.de or in-house mail by 1 May.
Between May and July, all entries will be evaluated by the award jury in a two-step procedure.
All applicants will be informed of the jury's decision at the end of July.
The award-winning projects will then be implemented during the subsequent winter or summer semester. Upon conclusion of their projects, all awardees are required to submit a project report.

Application and selection procedure Graphic: TUM

Kontakt

Koordination Lehrpreise

Hochschulreferat Studium und Lehre
Frauke Winkel, M.A.
Tel.: +49.89.289.25459
Fax: +49.89.289.25209
winkel(at)zv.tum.de

ProLehre | Medien und Didaktik
Dr. Andreas Fleischmann
Tel.: +49.89.289.25364
Fax: +49.89.289.25209
fleischmann(at)prolehre.tum.de

Kontakt

Koordination Lehrpreise

Hochschulreferat Studium und Lehre
Frauke Winkel, M.A.
Tel.: +49.89.289.25459
Fax: +49.89.289.25209
winkel(at)zv.tum.de

ProLehre | Medien und Didaktik
Dr. Andreas Fleischmann
Tel.: +49.89.289.25364
Fax: +49.89.289.25209
fleischmann(at)prolehre.tum.de