German Networking Meeting 2024
- Location
- Univerity of Birmingham
- Dates
- Tuesday 17 September 2024 (00:00)
First announcement and Call for Contributions
Registration now open!
Please follow this link for in person attendance or this link for online attendance.
Organising Team
- Dr Ruth Whittle (Associate Professor, Dept of Modern Languages – German)
- Dr Regina Seiwald (Deputy Director of Languages for All (LfA) and Subject Lead for LfA German, DAAD Ortslektorin)
- Dr Edward Boothroyd (Dept of Modern Languages - Schools Liaison Officer and Humanities Teachers’ Network member)
- Dr John Goodyear (Assistant Professor, Dept of Modern Languages and Co-director of the Midland German Network)
- Ms Nadine Sturm (DAAD Lektorin)
For whom?
All practitioners in German: in schools, FE or HE; students of Modern Languages, students in teacher training, linguists from other languages interested in the topic.
The topic
will be ‘Authentic Assessment’, by which we mean ‘inclusive assessment’, assessment that reflects students’ interests, tasks that address students as whole persons (e.g. humour, satire, film, song, images and not only writing) and AI-proof assessment. As such, it should not just appeal to Germanists, and you are all cordially invited to participate.
Keynote
Dr Miriam Neigert on ‘Humanizing Assessment’
Miriam has been a lecturer at University of New England, Australia, since 2018 and is the Discipline Convenor of German Studies. In 2023, she received a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) 2023, in recognition of the portfolio work she designed and introduced into all the German units at UNE.
Miriam works a very long way away from teachers of German in the UK. However, that does not mean she is distant from us when it comes to issues of student recruitment and retention. That is why her ideas on, examples for and approach to portfolio assessment as ‘humane’ assessment can be particularly stimulating in the context of this Meeting.
Also:
This event will also be a platform to showcase some of our other outreach efforts and partnerships here at the University of Birmingham:
-
Exam partnership with the Goethe-Institut: all those wanting a German language qualification, for example to study or work in Germany, will be able to take the Goethe-Zertifikat exams here at UoB (Dr Regina Seiwald)
-
The Midland German Network (Co-Directors of the Midland German Network, Dr John Goodyear (University of Birmingham) and Doris Zimmermann (University of Nottingham): Report on the audit of the German learning landscape at primary, secondary and tertiary level in the Midlands – and reasons given by schools for choosing German (in contrast to or together with other languages)
-
Prof Sara Jones (UoB): Europe’s East, the Second World War, and the Holocaust: A transnational Education Project – Introduction to Educational Resources for Secondary Schools as well as a pupil and teacher competition
If you’d like to help us in any way, we’d be very grateful.
Call for Contributions
The format of this Meeting is collaborative, so we are inviting you to submit an abstract (150 words) for either:
- A lightning talk on an aspect of ‘Authentic Assessment’ (5 mins + discussion)
OR
- A contribution to a workshop (20 mins + discussion and/or task for the participants to complete)
Please send your proposal as well as any queries to Ruth Whittle, r.whittle@bham.ac.uk.
If you have recently published in the area of Teaching German, please let the organisers know / have a copy so that we can display this work appropriately.
Looking forward to seeing you in Birmingham.
Ruth Whittle, on behalf of the Organising Team
Schedule
From 9.30 Registration
10.00 – 12.30 Morning sessions
12.30 – 14.00 lunch break and networking
14.00 – 15.15 Afternoon sessions
15.30 – 17.00 Outreach and partnerships
17.00 – 18.00 Reception and networking
This conference is generously supported by the DAAD as well as the AGS.