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The following text has been machine translated from the German with no human editing.
Universities are currently at a turning point: AI is changing the rules of teaching. How can education remain human when artificial intelligence enters the picture? The 'Teaching Day' at Saarland University offers guidance on this issue. Under the motto 'AI – Competencies and Innovations,' this year's event shows how a hurdle can be turned into an opportunity. Short seed talks, discussion panels, practical examples from teaching and interactive workshops make it clear that AI is not an adversary, but a tool that will make teaching more innovative and inclusive. Teaching Day will take place annually at Saarland University in future, bringing together everyone who is interested in teaching, wants to critically examine it and be inspired by new ideas, with a different focus each year.
The programme for Teaching Day 2026 includes an introductory lecture and six workshops on the following topics: Professor Mandy Schiefner-Rohs from RPTU Kaiserslautern will give the keynote speech, entitled 'From PowerPoint to PowerPrompt: a new operating system for teaching?'. She will talk about the influence of AI on teaching: How does it change the role of lecturers? She will also critically examine what is really new about teaching and learning with AI tools – and what is not. The university will publish the recording of the keynote speech as an audio file on 30 January 2026 in its 'Podcast for Lifelong Learning'.
Legal informatics professor Georg Borges will offer a workshop on 'Using AI tools in teaching and studying in a legally compliant manner'. It is aimed at anyone who uses or develops internal or external AI tools in university teaching. In addition to a compact overview of legal requirements according to the EU AI Act and the influence of AI on legally compliant examinations, the specific requirements of Saarland University will also be discussed.
The workshop 'How effective is my teaching? – Taking a research-based look at your own teaching' by educational scientist Professor Jörn Sparfeldt will address the question of what teachers know about the effectiveness of their own teaching. He will provide an overview of theoretical and methodological principles and use examples to discuss how these can be put into practice. Participants will learn how to analyze the effectiveness of their own teaching.
In the workshop 'Just ask the bot! AI as an additional tutor' by physicist Philipp Hövel, participants will explore a concrete application of AI in teaching: an AI-driven TutorBot for theoretical physics. Unlike freely available chatbots, the TutorBot generates its answers from documents that teachers provide in a pre-structured form. Another workshop by Andreas Korbach and Yue Zhao addresses the question of how AI can be used for knowledge transfer by helping to design information in a visual, auditory and interactive way, thus making knowledge tangible with all the senses. This involves, for example, music and podcasts as well as videos and other visual representations.
Svenja Geißler from KIT in Karlsruhe will present so-called 'Edu Escape Rooms' in her workshop. These offer a wide range of possibilities for activating teaching formats and are suitable for conveying content, assessing learning progress or as creative project work. With a few tricks and free tools, escape rooms can be developed independently. Cristina Andenna, professor of medieval history, and historian and educator Miriam Weiss will address the topic of 'AI for the brave. The hero's journey as a teaching and learning method for all subjects.' The focus will be on artificial intelligence as an active 'mentor' that accompanies learners on their journey through medieval history, for example.
Further information: Programme for Teaching Day 2026
