In den beiden spannenden Keynotes während des MINT Symposiums 2025 wurden relevante und evidenzbasierte Erkenntnisse über die Lehre und das Lernen in den MINT-Fächern geteilt. Damit regten die Keynotes viele lebendige Diskussionen an.
Keynote I
ICAP: Defining How Students Engage to Learn in Active Learning
Active learning improves student learning, but it is not clear what instructors should do to engage students in active learning. The ICAP theory provides a framework that defines and differentiates four different ways that students can engage-with-instruction in active learning, based on two concrete criteria.
The first part of this talk will describe the four “modes” that characterize the ways that students physically interact-with-instruction, and the outputs they produce in the context of each mode of interaction-with-instruction. Based on the cognitive processes underlying each mode of engagement, ICAP postulates the hypothesis that Interactive engagement, demonstrated by co-generative collaborative behaviors, is superior for learning than Constructive engagement, indicated by generative behaviors. Both kinds of engagement far exceed the benefits of Active or Passive engagement, marked by manipulative and attentive behaviors, respectively.
The second part of this talk will show three sets of findings, selected from numerous studies in the literature, supporting ICAP’s predictions that the Interactive mode of engaging is superior to the Constructive mode, which in turn is superior to the Active mode, followed by the Passive mode.
The third part of this talk will show how ICAP can be applied to improve instruction. That is, ICAP can be used as guiding principles to dictate how to design learning activities and lesson plans can be “upgraded,” that is, modify instructional activities from the lower ICAP modes to the higher ICAP modes, focusing explicitly on improving activities in the Active mode to the Constructive mode. Several examples will be given, such as: (1) how to upgrade the ICAP mode of questions; (2) how to use verbs to design activities; (3) how to upgrade the integration of technology usage; (4) how to improve lectures.
The final part of this talk will discuss several caveats for clarifications and concerns. One caveat concerns collaborative learning, that it is not always superior to individuals learning generatively. Moreover, instructors have limited ability to monitor students’ co-generative collaboration in real time. A second caveat concerns compliance, that is, students may not produce generative behaviors or talks even if they are prompted to do so. A third caveat is whether feedback is needed. A fourth caveat is the use of deeper assessment questions in order to detect the advantage of engaging in higher modes. A fifth caveat concerns the strict categorization of activities into a specific mode. A sixth caveat clarifies that ICAP predicts learning differences between modes, not within a mode.
Ten to fifteen minutes will be devoted to answering questions from the audience.
Prof. Dr. Michelene Chi
Yidan Laurete in Education Research, 2023
Regents’ Professor
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College
Arizona State University
Find more information on Prof. Dr. Michelene Chi here.
Michelene (Micki) Chi is a Regents’ Professor and the Dorothy Bray Endowed Professor of Science and Teaching at Arizona State University. She is also the Director of the newly funded ICAP Center for Teaching and Learning, its mission is to develop training modules and create a practical manual on how students engage to learn and how instructors can boost students’ engagement.
A unique interdisciplinary scholar, Prof. Chi has received numerous prestigious lifetime achievement awards from both education and psychology, such as the Rumelhart Prize from Cognitive Science, the McGraw Prize in Education, the Distinguished Contributions to Research Awards from both the American Psychological Association as well as the American Educational Research Association. Most recently, in 2023, she received the most prestigious prize in education research, the Yidan Laureate.
Keynote II
Brüche verstehen, Lehrinnovationen ausbreiten:
Medizinische Perspektiven auf MINT-Herausforderungen
Wir wissen sehr viel über Brüche. Aber warum sind Brüche dennoch für viele Studierende problembeladen?
Wir haben besonders in den MINT-Disziplinen keinen Mangel an wirksamen Lehrmethoden. Aber warum verbreiten sich diese meist sehr langsam bis gar nicht?
Wir rufen nach Veränderungen und arbeiten emsig daran. Aber warum gehen die Herausforderungen im MINT-Bereich nicht weg?
Um jede dieser Situationen besser zu verstehen und mögliche Auswege, vor allem aber kritische Hürden zu identifizieren, ziehe ich Vergleiche zur Medizin. Im historischen Rückblick hat sich diese Disziplin mehrfach verändert und ist sehr wirksam geworden. Dagegen hat Lehre eher Ähnlichkeiten zu früheren Phasen der Medizin. Möglicherweise ist es für den Patienten MINT-Lehre nützlich, Analogien zur Medizin (und deren Grenzen) zu betrachten: Wenn Lehrende Ärzte wären, dann …
Prof. Dr. Peter Riegler
ehemalige Geschäftsführung und wissenschaftliche Gesamtleitung
BayZiel – Bayerisches Zentrum für Innovative Lehre
Peter Riegler ist gelernter Physiker, der aus Verzweiflung über die Wirksamkeit seiner Lehre seine Forschungsaktivitäten von KI zunächst in die MINT-Hochschulfachdidaktik und später auch in die allgemeine Hochschuldidaktik verlegt hat. Seine Forschungsinteressen umfassen studentische Schwierigkeiten mit den Lehrinhalten, Technologie für formative Assessments und Decoding the Disciplines. Er lehrt an der Fakultät für Informatik der Ostfalia Hochschule und leitet derzeit das Bayerische Zentrum für Innovative Lehre.
Peter Riegler ist Ars legendi-Preisträger 2019 zum Thema „Lehren als wissenschaftliche Tätigkeit“. Die Jury würdigte, dass er seine Lehre mit einer forschenden Grundhaltung durchführt und sich dabei insbesondere mit den Verständnisschwierigkeiten der Studierenden auseinandersetzt.
ICAP Workshop
e expected participants are university instructors with some prior familiarity with ICAP. Attending Dr. Chi’s talk would provide sufficient familiarity, as would reading her ICAP papers.
The purpose of the workshop is to increase participants’ expertise in applying ICAP to upgrade learning activities. Although one of ICAP’s virtues is its simplicity, there are still many potential misconceptions, edge cases and nuances when applying it to specific learning activities. Moreover, ICAP typically illustrates a mode with simple examples, whereas authentic classroom activities, such as solving problems, often involve many factors that make them more difficult to classify into an ICAP mode. The difficulty of classifying some classroom activities is that many factors may come into play, and many of these factors can affect ICAP in ways that are not relevant or predicted by ICAP. For example, a student’s prior knowledge can affect the mode of a problem.
The workshop will have four phases. During the first phase of the workshop, the leader will present examples and non-examples of upgrades. For each one, participants will first vote on whether the pair of learning activities is an ICAP upgrade or not. Next, participants will discuss and defend their votes. Finally, the instructor will join the discussion.
During the second phase, the instructor will ask if any participants have already designed and implemented an upgrade. One or two such participants will be asked to briefly explain their upgrade to everyone, and feedback will be discussed.
During the third phase, participants will work individually on upgrading a learning activity that they have brought to the workshop. The instructor will circulate, answering questions while everyone is working.
During the fourth phase, selected participants will present the upgrade that they have designed, and answer questions from the participants. The instructor will select upgrades that are interesting and may provoke discussion.
Through these four phases, the participants should not only learn how to upgrade learning activities in their own subject matter, but also learn how others have upgraded their learning activities in different subject matters.
Prof. Dr. Kurt VanLehn
Emeritus Professor
The Diane and Gary Tooker Chair for Effective Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math
School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence
Arizona State University
Find more information on Prof. Dr. Kurt VanLehn here.
Kurt VanLehn received a Ph. D. from MIT in 1983 in Computer Science. He was a professor at CMU, University of Pittsburgh and Arizona State University. He recently retired as a chaired full professor. He founded two large NSF research centers, and won over $31M research funding. He has published over 190 peer-reviewed publications, many winning best-paper awards. He is a fellow in the Cognitive Science Society. Dr. VanLehn has been working in the field of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) since such systems were first invented. His current project is developing an ITS to teach college STEMM faculty Michelene Chi’s ICAP theory and practice.