Bridging course among the 2020 KITE Award finalists
Great honour for the Bridging Course in Mathematics: the project of the Department's Teaching Support and Development Group, was among the four finalists for the 2020 KITE Award.
The Bridging Course (German: Brückenkurs) is an online course for first-year students. It enables enrolled students to check and refresh their mathematical knowledge before they begin with their studies at the ETH Zurich. The course was designed by Alexander Caspar, Heinz Rasched and Meike Akveld of the Teaching Support and Development Group under the lead of Professor Norbert Hungerbühler.
Bridging Course helps enrolled students to consolidate their mathematical knowledge
The Bridging Course in Mathematics is a free service of the ETH Zurich for independent repetition and refreshing of school mathematics to facilitate the transition from Gymnasium to the ETH. Students of nearly all disciplines undergo demanding training in mathematics at ETH Zurich. Gymnasium graduates with a mathematical profile are generally well prepared for this. However, if a student has a different profile, took a gap year, or for some other reason wishes to determine whether the knowledge is sufficient for the mathematics courses at ETH Zurich, the Bridging Course may help to refresh and consolidate his or her mathematical knowledge.
After taking the self-assessment test, students have access to the Bridging Course where they can work through learning paths with videos tutorials, interactive exercises and scripts. Each path concludes with an online test for learning control. At least 2000 first-year students (60% of those invited) take advantage of this opportunity every year.
About the KITE Award
With the KITE Award, the Lecturers’ Conference (German: Konferenz der Lehrkörper) honours outstanding contributions to the development of innovative teaching and teaching concepts at ETH Zurich. The main goal is to enhance the status of teaching at ETH Zurich and its visibility outside the institution by honouring innovative approaches to teaching and learning methods that substantially increase the quality of education. It also aims at motivating teachers to take part actively in this development and at making successful teaching approaches known and available across disciplinary boundaries.
This year, a record of 34 projects were nominated for the KITE Award.