Students

Dear students. Why are you here, what do you want to achieve here? That is the central question at the beginning of your studies.

Attitude

Your attitude is decisive for your success at university. Your motivation and your goals determine what you will be able to do in the end. Some do not get a degree. Many get it, but in the end can do considerably less than their potential would actually allow. Just like at school, they only did what was required. That is particularly sad, because in hindsight so much more would have been possible here! Others again are really good afterwards and go on to do their master's without any problems. It is in your own hands. It should be your aim to get as much out of your time here as possible.

Success as a decision

I would like to show you my perspective on university: university is a huge opportunity for you. Here you have motivated and competent people in front of you who get up in the morning only so that you learn something. All of us lecturers are here voluntarily and all of us had other cool options for our careers. We want to educate you as well as possible! Whether this works depends on good teaching, but it depends much more on your willingness to learn.

You have the chance to leave here with a great many competences. You can be really good afterwards, you can take your company forward professionally and solve real problems. Our offer stands; you only have to take the outstretched hand.

Taking it means participating actively here and getting fully involved. It means leaving the PlayStation and the TV switched off and preparing in the evening for the next day's classes. It means understanding your own learning success as your own responsibility.

This is an active decision that each of you has to make again and again. You do not have to go full throttle in every subject. But if you notice that nothing here touches or inspires you at all, then perhaps you are in the wrong place.

My teaching is aimed at those of you who really want to. If you do not want to, you will learn very little anyway. I cannot change that. Hopefully one day you will turn things around and decide to change course. That sometimes takes a little time and life experience.

Theory of learning

You know the frustrating experience from school: you invest a lot of time to pass, for example, a maths test on fractions. And half a year later you realise that you can no longer apply much of what you learned about fractions. At the latest at university, when mathematics is applied, many students notice how badly school prepared them for it.

Studies show that half a year after their school-leaving exams, pupils still master about 5% of the material they learned at school. Why is that? The pupils did not really learn the material. They may have been able to recall it for an exam, but real learning is different.

Let us define the result of good learning: what I have really learned, I can apply afterwards. I can explain it to someone. I will not forget it, and if I do, I will have it back in a short time.

How does good learning work? We have to understand our brain so that we can adapt learning to its needs and the way it works.

The brain

Let us look at learning from a little distance: learning means making sure that your own brain creates internal connections. These are either long-lived or short-lived. There is far too much information, so the brain optimises what it stores and how. We work with a brain that was shaped mainly in the animal kingdom and in the Stone Age. Mass learning of an incredible amount of knowledge over many years has only existed for a comparatively short time. Evolution has not optimised our brain for this. If we understand how the brain stores information, we can in turn optimise learning accordingly.

The Stone Age brain stores the fearful encounter with the sabre-toothed tiger better than the boring picking of a cherry from a tree. It is controlled by emotions. So if we combine learning with emotions (positive and negative), what we have learned demonstrably sticks much better and longer. That is why we remember the music that was playing during our first kiss. Emotions are very powerful in learning. If you laugh heartily while we explain integral calculus, it actually helps learning. In the lab course, learning is sometimes linked with emotions.

The Stone Age brain is optimised for a human being to throw a spear far and accurately. It remembers relationships better if we carry them out many times in a row. A lot of practice leads to longer-term learning success. It is better if the practice sessions take place with some time in between. That is why we should repeat old practice units again and again. The brain then decides that this information is valuable and remembers it in the long term.

You will only store the theory of spear throwing briefly if you do not also throw the spear. By applying knowledge in practice, it is stored many times better than if you only read a book about spear-throwing technique. We achieve this aspect of good learning above all in the lab.

The relevance of a piece of information is also judged by whether something similar has already been considered important. You learn vocabulary better if you use analogies. The Latin word Fortuna, for example, means fate. If your "emotional fate" is linked to Fortuna Düsseldorf, you will easily remember this word with this analogy.

For many brains, pictures have a greater effect than words. You remember relationships better if you visualise them. With a sine function, for example, I see a pointer rotating in a circle. This tells me immediately how a sine works. I would not achieve the same effect in my brain with a mathematical equation. That is why I teach a lot with analogies.

When you teach someone else to throw a spear, you only then really understand the technique. If you only throw yourself, a lot happens through automatisms of the body. The arm throws more or less by itself for you. Your consciousness only sets the direction. Only when you explain it to someone else do you really think about the theory behind it down to the last detail. When explaining, you also notice whether you have really understood something. You may get stuck. Then you have reached a very exciting point for learning.

You listen to a talk or a lecture. You can follow the speaker. Then your brain signals that you have fully understood the content. Unfortunately, the pleasant feeling of being able to follow a talk means little for learning success. Your brain is fooling you. It suggests that you have understood something because you were able to follow it. It does not recognise the difference between following and good learning or real understanding.

There are different degrees of understanding: being able to follow a speaker or a text is not bad for a start. Being able to explain the relationships you have just learned to someone else is much better. Being able to apply the knowledge in practice is always the goal for an engineer. But it is the highest, most time-consuming and most uncomfortable degree of understanding. Long-term learning is not always pure pleasure.

Learning by scheme

If the goal of learning is to pass an exam, the brain will optimise learning for this. Depending on how the exam is set, understanding the material then becomes less important than solving problems. Since primary school, you have been drilled in maths to solve problems according to a fixed solution scheme. In this world there is always only one correct solution. One example is written long division. You could pass tests on it without really understanding the mathematics.

Learning with the goal of "understanding" takes only marginally longer than learning with the goal of "passing". And it is a lot more fun. For exam success without understanding, you have to solve many problems until you know the scheme well enough by heart. I know this from my own studies.

At university, however, problems are also set outside the scheme that you can only solve through understanding. That is why, for the same learning time, learning for understanding gives you better grades here than learning the calculation scheme. So you should leave school behind and rethink the way you learn.

If you can only calculate a binomial formula in the maths exam without understanding it, that is of little value. Just a few weeks later you can no longer do exactly that. An exam grade suggests to you that this is sufficient. But it is nonsense. If you understand the mathematics behind the binomial formula, you can apply it for the rest of your life. That should be the goal of learning.

Limits of your own understanding

When you notice problems with understanding, you are immediately brought to a point where you cannot go any further. You are standing in front of a wall and cannot get over it. Learning takes place outside the comfort zone. Everyone is frustrated or feels stupid at the beginning of a learning process because they do not understand something. You have to get through that.

You can ignore the lack of understanding and walk around the wall – then you learn nothing. Or you can keep trying until you can climb over it by yourself. That often takes a lot of time. Or you can let someone else help you over the wall. That is a very smart way to save time. That can be the lecturer, or it can be a fellow student. Form study groups and work together. If you help, make sure that the learner climbs by themselves and that you do not just tell them the solution.

To put it bluntly, you should be grateful when you are standing in front of such a wall. Each time you have the chance to really develop further. You do this much less when everything comes easily to you. Especially if you have difficulties at the beginning of your studies, you have to get through such points.

My teaching offer to you

Sitting in the lecture and listening passively as a consumer is a waste of time. By listening, knowledge is only stored superficially. The brain is hardly stimulated; 95% of the knowledge conveyed is gone again after 2 weeks. What is said must be linked with doing, emotions, repetition, pictures, analogies and explaining it to someone else.

A good lecture contains explanations, repetition, pictures and analogies. That is our part as lecturers. In the exercises and in the lab course, the knowledge is to be applied; this is about doing and emotion. Explaining something yourself is part of assignments and your own seminar contributions. That is your part.

Let us talk about roles: the learner is an active person, not a passive consumer. It is in their interest to learn the knowledge in the long term and to be able to apply it. They want something from the teacher. The teacher accompanies a process that they lead and shape. The teacher provides a safe learning environment, fun and subject-related support.

What do we have available for this? We have two hours of lecture and one hour of exercises per week. In some subjects we also have a lab course. At the end there is an exam. How do we use this?

Preparation: You teach yourself the knowledge by reading texts and watching videos at home in preparation for the lecture. That is why I built the website www.professorglasmachers.de. You write down questions, which we discuss in the lecture. Because you have read the content yourself, more sticks than if you only listened. Reading is an active process, listening is passive. In addition, at home everyone can work at their own pace, and you can revise and look up the knowledge at any time.

Lecture: During the lecture, I carry out experiments in which you see the knowledge applied. We talk about the material and discuss your questions. Afterwards, you solve exercises. The lecture is no substitute for reading; here we only go deeper. Your learning success in the lecture is greatest if you have read the material beforehand. Then the discussion in the lecture is the first repetition of the material. The exercises show you whether you can apply the material to simple problems. This raises new questions for the discussion.

Lab course: The lab course is the most valuable time for you. Here you apply the material in practice. Nothing is as helpful for long-term learning as the lab course, because here the emotions of success and failure meet your own actions.

Exercises: The exercise sessions are used either for further exercises or for lab practice. It is time during which you may work in small groups.

Exam: The exam should show whether you understand the material and can apply it. I am still looking for ways to test the material so that you must really have understood it to pass the exam.