What makes good teaching? Which teachers manage to convey theoretical content in a practical and understandable way? Who motivates students to learn and participate and who also promotes interdisciplinary skills? Who is committed beyond their own course?

The aim of awarding the teaching prize at the University of Apllied Science Kaiserslautern is to recognise outstanding achievements by teachers. These are characterised by good training of students, in that teachers place learning from the students' perspective in the foreground. However, students see good teachers not only as pure knowledge mediators with their subject-specific content, but also as supporters for the development of skills relevant to the labour market, such as social, methodological and personal skills. This task is primarily achieved by integrating practice into theory with the help of application-orientated concepts and content. The use of different methods and the realisation of different learning formats enables students to learn more easily and develop an understanding of the learning content. Only the students themselves can judge whether the teacher succeeds in doing this. Therefore, the focus of good teaching at the University of Apllied Science Kaiserslautern is solely on the students. They alone decide which teacher receives a teaching award.

With the help of the award, the teaching achievements not only gain greater visibility and significance at the university, but at best motivate other lecturers to increase their teaching activities. The teaching award thus creates an incentive for other lecturers to also address the topic of ‘good teaching’. The actual idea of creating a teaching award at the University of Apllied Science Kaiserslautern came from a suggestion made by students at a Meet & Eat with the Vice President, where they discussed the idea of good teaching, among other things. This idea was welcomed by the Senate Committee for Quality in Teaching and Learning (SQL), which deals with issues such as improving the quality of teaching. The members of the SQL decided to recognise lecturers who excel in their teaching and to award a teaching prize in each department, which is endowed with €5,000 per person and further promotes the quality of knowledge transfer. In order to best capture the voices of the students on the topic of ‘who does good teaching?’ in this process, it was also decided that the right to vote for the teaching award lies exclusively with the students of the HS KL.