HoBid Summer School „Approaches to Research on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education“
Teaching and learning at universities are addressed by many disciplines that are diverse in terms of content and methodology. Current research in higher education can be described as a multidisciplinary, but hardly as an interdisciplinary field of research. Junior researchers in this field often feel that they do not really belong to any of these disciplines concerned with teaching and learning in higher education. This situation represents a major challenge for researchers and this despite the fact that their research is clearly necessary for critically observing and understanding the many teaching-related innovations at universities.
Our goal is to promote and develop a network of educational researchers dealing with teaching and learning in higher education. We imagine this network to be interdisciplinary, addressing scholars from different disciplinary communities within educational research. This is necessary because of a current fragmentation of research on teaching and learning in higher education which leads to unused synergies and a loss of knowledge. With a functioning network of researchers, interdisciplinary research can be conducted and junior researchers can be attracted to see teaching and learning in higher education as their focus of attention and not only a subdomain in their “real” discipline.
With the summer school series, we can contribute to this goal in an effective and lasting way: The summer schools are a venue for junior and senior researchers to come together, experience the similarities and differences in their research and - most important – gain an understanding of themselves as part of the community. Furthermore, with the summer school we can set important thematic accents and stimulate discussions that are of great relevance for research on teaching and learning in higher education. These topics are quality (HoBid 2019), diversity (HoBid 2021), and science communication (HoBid 2023).
