The 1822 University Prize for Excellence in Teaching annually honors lecturers for particularly innovative and dedicated university teaching. Award recipients are nominated by students – as was the case for pediatrician Dr. Boris Wittekindt, who received the first prize this year.
UniReport: Dr. Wittekindt, what was going through your mind during the laudation?
Boris Wittekindt: I was so excited that I probably only took in half of it. What really stuck with me was that students don’t primarily associate me with special teaching content, but with the way I engage with them and accompany them in their medical socialization.
What can students learn from you?
Of course, one must distinguish between explicit and implicit learning objectives. On the surface, my students learn about the physiological characteristics of children, their development, common diseases, and emergency situations. My special field is the treatment of newborns, and this is also reflected in my teaching.
At least as important, however, are the implicit learning goals embedded between the formal content: How does one learn to take responsibility for patients? How do I avoid mistakes or react to them? How do you communicate with parents and children? How do you find your stance in existential situations?
How did you learn to teach?
Well, I think it started with the typical mix of imitation as well as trial-and-error. In medicine, didactic training usually doesn’t enter the fray until the habilitation process, but I had already been teaching since my student days. I received more systematic input through meetings of colleagues interested in didactics within my faculty – I should mention Falk Ochsendorf and Thomas Kollewe here. And then, from 2017 to 2019, I completed a part-time master’s degree in medical didactics.
Which teaching methods do you most enjoy using?
My favorite way of teaching is to send students on an imaginary journey to the emergency room: I try to describe a situation involving a sick child, and the students then turn into a kind of detective, asking questions about medical history, examinations, or possible treatments in an effort to solve the fictional patient’s problem. Sometimes this exercise requires pictures, other scenarios can be acted out. Of course, this thought experiment also has its limits, and at some point, one must start with real patient interaction – something for which the students are well prepared by then.
How important are new technologies to you? Are you curious about AI?
When it comes to technology, I think I am still somewhat cautious. Of course we recorded all our lectures, so students don’t necessarily need to come to the lecture hall anymore – which they don’t. I also started a podcast discussing topics around child medicine with changing guests. The rest of my teaching is only moderately digital. Honestly, I had no idea about AI in teaching, but after the keynote lecture at the award ceremony, I became quite curious. Maybe I’ll have more to report in two years …
When does teaching work really well?
When both sides are motivated. The most difficult classes are mandatory courses whose attendance participants can’t comprehend, and which lecturers only deliver because they are obliged to.
What sometimes frustrates you in teaching?
For one thing, what I just hinted at: the “teaching obligation” for professors and PDs, some of whom have no interest in it at all and are much better qualified in other areas. And conversely, the fact that enthusiasm for teaching usually does not advance one’s career in the university system.
What have you always wanted to tell your students?
Studying is wonderful – explore everything that interests you and don’t just take the prescribed courses. Get involved, whether in institutes, student initiatives, or student councils. And feel free to stay a little longer: after the bachelor’s comes the master’s, after the medical state examination, the specialist training, and after the doctorate the postdoc phase.
The 1822 University Prize for Excellence in Teaching is awarded by the foundation of Frankfurter Sparkasse and Goethe University – but the laudation is given by the students who nominated the lecturers for the award. On this occasion, the audience learned that senior physician in neonatology Dr. Boris Wittekindt is a “creator of possibilities”; someone who comes up with many ways of sharing his knowledge, be it through interactive lectures, peer-teaching opportunities, the podcast “Päd als Pod,” or patient encounters in seminars. Students also emphasized that Wittekindt is committed to improving medical education – and that he is “quite simply there, offering words of encouragement.”
