Overview - digital starter kit

What is the goal of the Blue Engineering Seminar?

The interdisciplinary Blue Engineering Seminar offers a view beyond one’s own horizon and an (inter-)active examination of one’s social and ecological responsibility. In this way, students add to their specialized knowledge an orientation knowledge and acquire competencies that help them to know their role in relation to technology and society and to shape it together with others.

How is the seminar structured and conducted?

Interesting, creative, interdisciplinary, sometimes heated but always in a good working atmosphere. Even in the digital format, Blue Engineering does not offer frontal teaching, but a methodically and thematically diverse seminar, which is largely co-designed by the participants.

What are building blocks?

Building blocks are the core element of the student-driven Blue Engineering seminar. These units, which are well documented in terms of content and didactics, shift both the learning as well as the teaching process within a seminar to the participants - to the greatest extent possible! In this sense, the one’s conducting the seminar do not have to be experts, but they act as facilitators who guide the complex teaching/learning process of the participants

How is the Blue Engineering Seminar structured?

The Blue Engineering Seminar consists of three main phases:

Tutors conduct six fixed basic building blocks in order to convey to the participants the way of working as well as the general content and didactic claim of the seminar.
Participants carry out existing modules in small groups for their fellow students and thus learn how to design a demanding teaching/learning unit.
The small groups develop their own module over the entire semester, which they then implement for their fellow students and comprehensively document for further use. For quality assurance, they receive feedback from fellow students and tutors several times.

How is the performance of the participants assessed?

Participants will take a portfolio exam consisting of two partial exams, each worth 50 points:

Keeping a learning journal as individual work.
Development, conduction and presentation of a newly developed building glock as a semester project done in a small group.

Who participates in the seminar?

(Prospective) engineers who want to think outside the box. Students of architecture, planning, social sciences and humanities with an interest in technology, society and responsibility can participate without any problems, as in-depth technical knowledge is not necessary.

By whom is the seminar offered?

By anyone who wants to incorporate social and environmental responsibility topics into university teaching using a variety of methods. With the digital starter kit you can start immediately. The seminar is implemented already at 9 universities in Germany where the seminar is largely conducted by tutors. Only in the back, a university lecturer is responsible and supports the tutors.

Where and how is the Blue Engineering Seminar already offered?

The modular seminar is already offered at 9 universities in the elective area of several study programs with about 5 to 6 credit points and for about 25 to 100 participants. So far, more than 2,000 students have participated at TU Berlin, TU Dresden, TU Hamburg, Uni Stuttgart, HAW Berlin, HTW Berlin, TH Köln, HS Ruhr West and HS Düsseldorf.

How can I offer a seminar at my university?

The Blue Engineering Seminar is completely modular, so that it can be adapted to the respective conditions without further ado. The digital starter kit provides the essential basic building blocks for a digital Blue Engineering Seminar, so that an own seminar can be offered directly tomorrow. In addition to the building blocks, only a common learning management system and a video conferencing system are required.

What support do I get if I want to offer a seminar?

The responsible persons at the existing universities already cooperate intensively with each other. If you would like to start a seminar, you will receive intensive support - if desired - so that you can profit from the experience knowledge that we have acquired over the past years.

How was the seminar transferred to digital? What experiences were made in the process?

Blue Engineering already has a solid foundation of analog basic building blocks that cover many relevant content and methodological aspects. Building on these analog basic building blocks, the digital building blocks were developed. They kept the same content and methodological orientation - however the design was completely revised and adapted to digital video conferencing.

A digital blue engineering seminar is offered via video conference at all 9 universities. The responsible persons are in regular exchange with each other and their experiences so far show that the digital space can be designed in such a way that the participants can strongly interact and exchange with each other. The participants tell us that the Blue Engineering Seminar saves them the digital semester because they don't just sit in front of a computer, but come into direct contact with people.