3. Symposium der TUM: Junge Akademie

With the realization of a 7-episode podcast series, which was published from June 2019 to January 2020, team Africast aim to strengthen the partnership between the TUM and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana. They hope to raise awareness about ongoing projects in Ghana, especially in academia and scientific research. In a wider scope, Africast contributes to the TUM.Africa initiative, which aims to build lasting relationships with partners on the African continent. Team Africast emphasizes the exchange of information between Ghanaians and Europeans as equals. The project established a network with partners such as the Ghana Students Union Munich or the International Office of KNUST. more

Our daily living is surrounded by Internet and technology, whereas the knowledge regarding data privacy and cybersecurity is still not commonly covered in the basic education at schools. In an effort to translate scientific information into information and actions, which everyone can easily understand and apply, the team Digital Enlightenment is putting their ideas into action and trying to bridge the gap between science and our daily lives. They worked on several topics within the field of data privacy, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, activity tracking, oversharing online and hardware hacking. They carried the information and knowledge into classrooms throughout workshops at local high schools in Munich. Their goals were not only to inform students about these topics, but also raise students’ awareness and invite them to reflect on their interaction within the digital world in order to develop their ability to assess risks on their own and make responsible choices online to protect themselves. more

The project dealt with the complex lecture evaluation system at the Technical University Munich (TUM). First, the project group conducted an extensive situation analysis. This included a survey among TUM representatives, constructive discussions with authorities and stakeholders as well as literature research. Afterwards, team EvaluaTUM executed two case studies: they successfully accompanied the Munich School of Engineering with its transition from paper based to online evaluation. Thereby, the team alleviated doubts concerning the participation in online evaluation and achieved a significant improvement of the situation with only minor interference. In cooperation with the Faculty of Chemistry, the team proposed a more distinct evaluation form, which significantly increased feedback quality. more

CrowdTUM is a crowdfunding platform created by Team Freesearch. Crowdfunding is a model for collecting money from a large group of people selecting projects. We created this platform in order to explore whether crowdfunding can be an alternative to conventional models of science funding, especially for smaller scientific student lead projects. Members of the TUM community, by large students of TUM, could apply with their scientific projects to be showcased and potentially funded via the platform. For this we developed criteria which classified projects as scientific and potentially successfully fundable. While implementing the online platform, we furthermore had to deal with legal, financial and privacy related topics, as well as think about marketing the platform and projects. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we also pursued the idea of creating support packages for students with financial difficulties caused by the pandemic. more

For our adventure trail, we decided on the overarching topic climate change in urban areas, as we believe it is a subject of utmost significance worldwide and, thus, for people living in Munich. We designed the adventure trail with seven stations addressing different facets of the topic like architecture, traffic, and biodiversity. To stay within easy reach for the interested public, we decided to place the trail in the Olympiapark. Together with the City of Munich’s environmental department, which we won as a collaborator, we realized the trail as an online application. Even though the stations are not physical, we designed them in such a manner that the participants are motivated to interact actively with the surrounding area and, thus, learn more intensely about the topic. Furthermore, we integrated some gamification elements (like quizzes and a small experiment) to motivate the participants. In a nutshell, our adventure trail encourages people to playfully engage with urban climate change. more

Team Quintessence first met in November 2019 under the main topic of “Perception” and together we attempted to examine possibilities of improving the commonly prevalent lecture environment for students by means of changing the structure of the setting, in which these are held. The aim was to develop methods for a smoother and more comfortable and thought-inspiring lecture, which can be applied independently from the specific lecture subject or lecturer. Backed by literature research and two case studies at ETH Zurich and RWTH Aachen, we developed lecture break concepts and tested them here at TUM. We were able to show significant improvements to the students’ perceived attention in response to the interventions. Our research further motivated the induction of our lecture break concept into the TUM: Future Learning Initiative, where our project “BreakMore” is currently being considered a candidate for implementation. more

Team StudyStrats explored the aspect of knowledge perception. Identifying the learning modality which suits best can be a challenging issue for students. This issue was investigated with a focus on active and passive ways of learning. For this, two studies were realized. Here, the participants’ personality traits and learning preferences were assessed using a newly developed questionnaire and their performance on tasks using different learning modalities was monitored. It was shown that the significant difference of students’ performance using different learning modalities was explained by their learning preferences and controlled by the scores of active and passive learning calculated in the questionnaire. However, the questionnaire was not able to predict the most effective learning strategy for each individual. These results align with diverse research in the field of learning strategies. Nevertheless, the project was able to give deeper insight into the process of learning and showed an urge for further research to understand differences in academical achievement. more