Teaching Award 2025 for Innovative Education in Business Analytics

The Ulm University Teaching Award 2025, endowed with €4,000, has been awarded to Dr Maximilian Förster and Dr Andreas Obermeier from the Institute for Business Analytics. The award recognises their jointly developed course “Methoden der Wirtschaftsinformatik”, which follows a forward-looking and highly effective teaching concept delivered as an intensive block seminar followed by a flipped classroom phase.

Instead of traditional lectures, the course is built around a modern, research-oriented learning environment. It combines interactive workshops, flipped-classroom formats, collaborative paper reading and writing, as well as the development, presentation and defence of students’ own research concepts. The teaching approach is further enhanced through the targeted use of generative AI, digital tools, innovative assessment formats and AI-supported learning methods.

The course aims to actively engage students—particularly in light of the experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid development of artificial intelligence—and to encourage them to take on the role of emerging researchers at an early stage. Students do not merely learn research methods; they apply them in practice, critically reflect on them and further develop their own ideas through teamwork.

The course is a core component of the Master’s programme “Management Information Systems - Digital Business & Analytics” and is regarded as an outstanding example of sustainable, future-ready teaching. With this Teaching Award, Ulm University honours initiatives with strong role-model character and impact beyond disciplinary boundaries—criteria that this course fulfils in an exemplary manner.