ENCRYPTO Recognized for Good Academic Teaching

„Athene-Preise für gute Lehre“ awards best practices

2024/11/21 by

TU Darmstadt held its annual Teaching Day on 20 November 2024, concluding with the presentation of the Athene Awards for Good Teaching („Athene-Preise für gute Lehre“). Sponsored by the Carlo and Karin Giersch Foundation, these awards recognize exceptional teaching efforts with a total prize fund of 46,000 euros. The ENCRYPTO group of CROSSING-PI Prof. Thomas Schneider received the award of the Department of Computer Science.

Members of the research group ENCRYPTO of Professor Thomas Schneider receive the ATHENE Prize for Good Teaching 2024 of the Deparmtent of Computer Science.

The award acknowledges Prof. Thomas Schneider, Andreas Brüggemann, Nora Khayata, Daniel Günther und Sebastian Engel for the practice-oriented restructuring of the “Digitaltechnik” course for first-year students in the winter term 2023/24. Their revised approach integrates SystemVerilog hardware description concepts throughout the semester as opposed to a compact unit at the end of the term, making the subject matter more accessible and boosting exam performance.

The team introduced tutorials, quizzes, mandatory homework, open office hours, and newly developed support tools to enable students to complete the demanding content and keep them motivated throughout the course. Also, regular lecture recordings were added after an involuntary but successful trial run during rail strikes in 2024. These changes based on student feedback lead to enhance motivation, provide practical relevance, and improve overall studyability for beginners. Thomas Schneider is “very pleased” with to see “significantly more questions and interactions” as a result of the new course structure.