Our latest paper about our lecture "Kompter & Creativität" was selected for the Best Paper Award at the IEEE German Education Conference 2024.
We at the Chair for Data Processing (1) and our collaborators from the Heinz Nixdorf-Chair of Mathematics Education (2) and ProLehre | Media and Didactics (3) are very happy about this successful interdisciplinary work.
Special thanks also go to Karin Krug from fast-food theater for providing us every year with the amazing improvisational theater workshops as a central part of the course.
Title: Komputer & Creativität | Teaching at the Intersection of Engineering, AI, and Theater
Authors: Stefan Röhrl(1), Sabrina Schwarzmeier(2), Luca Sacchetto(1), David Fresacher(1), Alexandra Strasser(3), Klaus Diepold(1)
Summary:
The paper discusses a novel approach to teaching communication and creativity skills to engineering students through a course titled "Komputer & Creativität." This course integrates technical content with improvisational theater workshops, providing students with experiential learning opportunities to enhance their communication skills and creativity. Traditional methods of teaching these interdisciplinary skills as supplementary add-ons have been insufficient, so this course aims to embed them directly into the curriculum.
Komputer & Creativität combines lectures on human and artificial creativity, hands-on programming assignments, and group projects with three key improvisational theater workshops. These workshops focus on structuring and improvisation, role dynamics, and storytelling, helping students to improve their communication abilities and creative thinking.
The course has been evaluated over several years, showing significant improvements in students' self-perceived communication skills and high satisfaction levels. The results suggest that this interdisciplinary teaching approach is effective and could be adapted for other STEM courses, although scalability for large groups remains a challenge.
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