Dr. Ryan Crisp, NAT-Lehrpreisträger, im Interview zum Thema gutes Lehren

The Faculty of Sciences at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg has awarded the teaching prize for good teaching. Among the winners is Dr. Ryan Crisp from the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy*. We spoke to Ryan about his teaching.

Please introduce yourself:
I am Dr. Ryan Crisp, a group leader and habilitation candidate in the Chair of Chemistry of Thin Film Materials. My group and I research synthetic routes and material properties of nanocrystals for applications in photovoltaics and photoelectrochemistry. I have over a decade of teaching experience ranging from chemistry and physics lab courses, to mathematics and engineering, as well as nanomaterial chemistry and device physics.

Congratulations on receiving the teaching award of the Faculty! Could you tell us which aspects of your teaching were recognized?
I find the most impactful way to help students learn is to actively engage them in the learning process. When the students can interact with the material using as many of their senses as possible, they develop a deeper understanding the concepts. I also help and encourage the student’s success by clearly summarizing the important take-away messages and provide extra, individually tailored learning sessions for supporting their learning. Judging from their open feedback, the students appreciate these efforts.

You have recently received the Certificate for Teaching in Higher Education of the Bavarian Universities by completing the course “Introduction to Higher Education Teaching” offered by the FAU EDU. How has this impacted your teaching and interaction with students?
The Higher Education Teaching course was a great experience that reinforced and expanded my teaching intuition to give it a more scientific fundament to further build upon. The approaches I had been using before the course were but the first steps in becoming a much more effective teacher. This course through ProfiLehrePlus gave me more tools and training to level-up, so-to-speak, my lecturing. Many of the themes taught during the course were not difficult to grasp but when implemented in my lectures, had a rather strong impact in my student’s learning success.

What advice would you give to other educators looking to improve their teaching, and how do you view the role of professional development in higher education teaching in this context?
Too often lecturers tend to just “wing it” when developing and giving their lectures, which can be based on mimicking those lecturers that they found effective in the past, however, I would advise looking up the theory on how lectures and courses are best structured and to at least follow this framework when making ones own lectures as even the smallest bit of planning and structuring can have a huge impact on the outcome of the lecture.

Thank you for the interview, Ryan!
You’re welcome.

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