Apply by: 10 September 2026
Teacher: Dr. Karolin Salmen
Dates: Four online session on the following dates
Thursday, 17 September 2026, 10.00 -12.00
Thursday, 24 September 2026, 10.00-11.00
Thursday, 01 October 2026, 10.00-11.00
Thursday, 08 October 2026, 10.00-12.00
Please note that additional time is required between sessions to complete assignments and online meetings in small groups.
Place: Online on MS Teams Universität Heidelberg
Prerequisite: To participate, you must be actively involved in specific research-related teaching. A realistic, research-oriented teaching project that can be planned, revised, and discussed is therefore required.
Openness to a workshop-style format and working in groups
Assessment: Regular participation and upload of assignments
Registration: Write an email to Lehren-und-lernen@uni-heidelberg.de stating the name of the course, your name, university, discipline, position, mail address to apply for the course until 10th September 2026; further information will be provided after registration.
Research-based teaching and learning is a main feature of the 4EU+ educational framework. As a key term in educational and higher education policy discourses worldwide it has emerged as an effective method for fostering deep learning. But what does this multifaceted concept actually entail? Is it simply a modern reinterpretation of Humboldt’s classic ideal of the unity of research and teaching? Or is it merely about communicating our own research findings to students? What do research and learning have to do with each other in the first place? And how can I concretely implement a research-oriented approach in my teaching?
This online course addresses these questions and explores concrete ways to implement them in your own teaching. In this planning workshop, we will primarily draw on the proposals for research-based learning by Mick Healey & Alan Jenkins as well as the Zurich Framework. You will first classify and reflect on your planned course within these parameters. This involves, among other things, the following questions: Are students more active participants or an audience? Is the content of cutting-edge research presented, or is the focus on the process of research production? Is the goal for students to explore existing answers to research questions, or should students find their own answers to such questions? Or even develop their own questions?
In a fixed small group, you will develop content on research-based learning, plan your specific course, and receive feedback from the instructor as well as your peers.
Learning objectives:
After this course you will be able to…
reflect different definitions of research-based learning and describe your understanding of this didactic principle.
locate your university‘s approach to RBL in the context of Healey and Jenkins‘ definition of research-based learning.
explicitly describe the research cycle for your discipline.
identify student activities which are part of the research cycle.
plan measures to further enhance RBL at your university.
Teaching Learning Activities:
Short presentations
Individual work
Group work
Moderated discussion
Technical requirements:
We use Microsoft Teams as a platform for the whole course. Please make sure that you have registered with Microsoft. We will need your mail-ID that you use for this in order to guarantee your access to the platform and the course.
The course’s dissemination to the 4EU+ Alliance is organized in the framework of the 4EU+ 1CORE project (One Comprehensive Research-Intensive European University, Work Package 2: 4EU+ Curricula: towards a joint educational offer), under the Erasmus+ funded European Universities Initiative.