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Hochschule Fulda

Mission Statement Teaching and Studies

PREAMBLE
Learning - Acting - Growing Together

... this claim is both our orientation and motivation when designing the offers at our university. We understand teaching and learning as a joint task: different groups contribute TOGETHER to the success of learning. Teaching quality is reflected both in the daily interaction between students and teachers as well as in the various support structures at our university. Through these framework conditions, we promote a joint LEARNING of all members in the university and support trial fields for practice-related ACTION. This results in the individual GROWTH of each person, the further development of the study programme and academic impulses in exchange with the practice partners.
The following guiding principles explain what is important to us in implementing this aspiration.

TOGETHER - cooperation as the basis
We understand learning and teaching as a cooperative process between students, teachers and all university staff. In the cooperation of these groups, the learning process is constantly updated and brought to life.
Our cooperation is characterised by mutual appreciation for different perspectives, professional expertise and the diversity of people. Based on a fundamental understanding of democracy, openness towards others is just as important to us as critical and reflective thinking and according responsible actions.
Learners and teachers alike take on changing roles in the learning process and open up mutual learning opportunities.
Our students actively participate in the courses and the further development of teaching. They take responsibility for their learning process as well as for their personal and professional development. In doing so, we support students in their individual educational biographies.
The teaching staff at Fulda University of Applied Sciences have diverse professional biographies and contribute their academic and professional expertise to teaching.
Across the university, we use and maintain an infrastructure that is conducive to learning, which we continuously develop together and adapt to the current needs of our students. In addition, we cooperate in teaching with various partners and have diverse regional, national and international networks.

LEARNING - competence acquisition in dialogue
The goal of our teaching is the personal formation and career development of our students. The focus of our courses is therefore the development and expansion of professional, methodological, personal and social competences. This also includes enabling students to engage in lifelong learning, taking into account the requirements of the 21st century. We want to inspire students for practice and science and enable them to act analytically, critically and independently.
In our courses, we therefore tie in with the living and working world of our students. The basis for this is a very good supervision ratio of teachers to students, which often gives us the opportunity for direct dialogue.
Learning in small groups is essential for us - especially for the development of personal and social skills. For this reason, our teachers arrange subject- and topic-specific learning environments for learning in groups, which enable a targeted, open as well as critical-reflective exchange among each other. Students are thus supported in their individual and cooperative learning processes. Here, too, diversity proves to be an opportunity to learn from each other.
On the organisational level, we attach importance to the communication of the study programme as a whole as well as to transparent information about the concrete design of individual modules and courses. Barrier-free access is part of our self-image.

ACTION - Focus on practice and research
Our teaching refers to current tasks and developments in research, business, politics and society in order to be able to apply the acquired competences in diverse fields of action and thus facilitate the theory-practice transfer. The diverse and intensive exchange with practice partners enables us to take up impulses and requirements from practice and incorporate them into research- and experience-based teaching.
For us, practical relevance means, learning and teaching in different job-oriented environments, such as in laboratories, workshops or through discursive-solution-oriented processing of problems from the professional world. We also understand this to mean problem-oriented learning and teaching in cooperation with our practice partners, in which competences for action are systematically built up. Last but not least, practical orientation also refers to the supplementary acquisition of digital competences in contemporary learning environments, which are increasingly decisive for a successful career entry.
In addition to practical relevance, our teaching stands for the acquisition of knowledge through research-based learning that takes place with, for and through research. Students acquire knowledge, skills and competences through participation in research processes, work independently on research projects and learn to communicate their own research results to a broad audience. The central basis for the research orientation ofour teaching is scientific working and thinking. Here, too, we accompany our students in their own cognitive processes.

GROWTH - Individual and university-related development
We see this understanding of teaching as an opportunity for students and teachers to grow in their personal abilities.
We consider studying to be an essential stage in the life of students who take personal responsibility for their learning processes from the very beginning, grow with them and actively stimulate the further development of teaching.
For us, good teaching is based both on the continuous development of the degree programmes, the examination of and the reflection on one's own teaching competence. In this context, the regular evaluation of the courses is of particular importance, so that development potentials of the study programmes and the university can be identified. We are continuously developing our teaching competences through the educational offers for the methodological-didactic design of teaching formats that are oriented towards learning objectives and are tailored to fit.
At the university level, growth in the sense of further development in teaching can also be seen in the growing number of additional digital advisory and support services offered by the central study institutions, aas well as in the further development of university didactics in cooperation with students, teachers and staff of the university's supporting and advisory institutions.
Last but not least, as a university of applied sciences, we orient ourselves towards current job profiles and sustainable development in the design and further development of our curricula. In doing so, we take into account the increasing heterogeneity of our students in particular when designing the curricula and use the possibilities of internationalising the study programmes. In this context, quality assurance and accreditation are of particular importance.