At The Hochschule Niederrhein (HSNR), students are not only prepared for their future careers in theory. They learn to put their theoretical knowledge into practical application in project assignments. To make this even more successful, professors and staff have received funding of around 414,000 euros from the "Innovation in University Lecturer" foundation for their "Freiraum" project.

Developing innovative products in interdisciplinary teams with the help of digital technologies is now an integral part of engineers' professional lives. "In order to optimally prepare students for the professional world, it is essential to create a teaching and learning environment in which student groups can come together and jointly develop their own interdisciplinary projects in order to acquire technical and interdisciplinary skills," says Professor Dr. Benedikt Janßen, who teaches Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

The aim of the "Freiraum" project is to integrate project assignments more closely into teaching education over the course of two years. The special thing about it is that the students work cooperatively across module boundaries on projects from various subject areas, which they can select according to their interests. "The projects are designed jointly by students and lecturers. The long-term goal is to develop prototypes, components, tools and their documentation to create a basis for future student projects. In this way, subject areas should grow in the long term and be sustainably integrated into teaching education as use cases," explains Dr. Matteo Zella, Professor of Computer Engineering.

In the current summer semester, students from the compulsory optional modules "Introduction to Smart Electronic Textiles" by Professor Dr. Ekaterina Nannen (Electrical Engineering and Electronics) and "Embedded Software Engineering" by Professor Dr. Janßen are already working together on interdisciplinary projects. In the projects, the students develop systems for vertical gardening or vertical farming, assistance systems and art and lifestyle products that they have chosen and conceived themselves. The lecturers support them in achieving the specific module objectives. Contributions from students create a growing collection of materials on which the learning processes and projects of other students can build.