Competence View – Teaching cross-disciplinary competencies at ETH
On 15 January 2020, we launched Competence View, an exciting new platform that features good practice examples of fostering cross-disciplinary competencies at ETH Zurich. It highlights examples from across most departments and covers all the cross-disciplinary competencies (social- and personal competencies) detailed in the ETH competence framework (link).
Competence View at the teaching retreat
The kick-off event for the Competence View at the teaching retreat in Abtwil on 15 January featured a poster session, where the faculty behind the Competence View projects presented their own courses and their teaching approaches with the interested audience.
From Faculty for Faculty
In a first round, we met with 20 lecturers to discuss with them how they foster cross-disciplinary competencies in their courses. We present the stories of these discussions as a set of examples, designed to elicit reproduction of teaching sequences or parts thereof by you and your colleagues. Some examples come in the form of a lesson sequence, some as an interview with the faculty teaching the course, others describe a certain method or technique used in the teaching. All of the examples feature contact information of the presenting faculty. Inquiries about the featured course elements are more than welcome.
The Future-Ready Graduate
Competencies such as teamwork, presentation skills or critical thinking no doubt belong in the curricula of your study programmes. But how can these competencies be taught? And where do they fit in the syllabi? How to make time to develop lesson sequences that promote the competency you would like your students to acquire? Additional, extra-curricular activities to foster cross-disciplinary competencies are one way to do it. This, of course is not so easy since there is not exactly a lot of free space in the current curricula. We advocate an integrated approach to foster most of the cross-disciplinary competencies described in the ETH competence framework. Competence View shows you examples where the fostering of such competencies is integrated in the syllabi of the respective courses. It attempts to rectify the misconception that the integration of cross-disciplinary competencies such as creativity, teamwork or critical thinking and many others takes a lot of additional time.
Competence orientation
Start with the question: What do I want that my students are able to do at the end of my course? Trying to answer this question in a competence-oriented way might help in several ways. Formulating competence-oriented goals, or learning objectives, can be a helpful guide for your own course planning. It shifts the focus away from over-crowded syllabi towards designing courses that align with your goals. It can help to make the content from your lecture more transferrable. It also gives your students orientation. It can help them to develop realistic expectations about your course.
The Competence View
Competence View is based on the 2018 developed Innoview platform. You find the Competence View here (link). You can use the platform in several ways: Feel free to browse the presented examples and learn about what your colleagues are doing. Or you can search for a specific competency: Just click on one of the competence categories on the right side. A selection of examples is then shown that specifically foster this competence. If you click on one of the examples, the featured course opens in a pop-up window. This (link) screen capture movie gives a first orientation about Competence View and its features.
Your teaching featured
If you want to contribute your teaching experience to the growing Competence View platform, contact Julia Kehl from LET. We are happy to talk to you about good teaching at ETH.