TEDx premiere at Jacobs
Jacobs students Anna-Lena Schindl, 20, and Stephan Hürholz, 21, are bringing the first official TEDx event to the Jacobs campus. We have caught up with them during their final preparations for this unique discussion forum taking place at the Conrad Naber Lecture Hall on October 15, 2011.
October 12, 2011Anna-Lena and Stephan, what is the idea behind TED and your TEDx event?
Stephan Hürholz: TED is a non-profit organisation that has devoted itself to ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’. They run an online platform which features many inspiring talks. On www.ted.com people share ideas and personal experiences that have brought them forward. They are accumulating a diverse array of knowledge for humans and are bringing it out there for the world to watch and listen to. Any idea or experience can be shared – from the very technical to the very personal. TEDx events are local, self-organized events that bring people together to share ideas. We thought with Jacobs University being such a diverse place and lots of students following TED talks online on a regular basis, it would be a great idea to have such an event on campus.
You have chosen the topic ‘Educating Concerned Citizens’ for your TEDx forum. What have you got planned?
Anna-Lena Schindl: We have invited a number of scholars and entrepreneurs from Jacobs and other universities, organizations and initiatives in Germany and the Netherlands to present new ideas of education in the 21st century. We will discuss how education has to change to adapt to new digital technologies and to prepare students for new global challenges of climate change, population expansion or difficult situations in the financial markets.
Stephan Hürholz: Presentations are limited to a length of 18 minutes. Instead of having a Q&A session with the speakers after their presentations people are encouraged to mingle and interact with each other and to carry on their talks and discussion in an informal setting. Speakers and audience members are equal, no one is put on a pedestal. For a first TEDx event the audience size is limited by TED to 100 people. If you like to attend you need to apply or be invited.
Why did you pick the topic of education?
Anna-Lena Schindl: It is a subject that affects everyone here. Technically we did not really need a topic, TED events can be completely broad and open for all sorts of ideas. But we still wanted to give it a focus to make it a feasible event. We were inspired by Yehuda Elkana’s lecture on the Curricular Revolution which he held on campus back in April. We had a couple of meetings with him with a small group of friends when we discussed some of his ideas about education in the 21st century. There are so many people out there who have ideas on how to change education right now. We thought it would be great to set up a forum of exchange for them.
Stephan Hürholz: Yehuda Elkana turned out to be a great source of information and a brilliant mentor for us. He has helped us to get in touch with speakers for our event. We were looking for speakers who might provide input on an education-teaching basis and have also been trying to work with Jacobs professors to maybe actively change their style of teaching. Scholars in this field are very much interested to hear what students have to contribute to the debate.
What are your ideas for changing education in the 21st Century?
Stephan Hürholz: We both think that final exams are unproductive and that we need to work on more innovative solutions. You test a specific set of information or knowledge on a given day at a certain time and try to give it a numeric grade. This might be possible in the sciences, but much less so in the humanities. It makes much more sense to have a student work on a project over the course of the semester and to also take into account how passionate and involved they are in their work.
Anna-Lena Schindl: I think we need to acknowledge that accessing information has changed dramatically over the last decade and has become much easier. Lectures should not just be about presenting this information that is readily available to everyone online. There should be more focus on actually applying knowledge and transferring it to real world problems.
More information on TEDx Jacobs University, including the program and the list of speakers.
