The 27th International Project Week (IPW) at Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences was from 19 to 23 May. My friend and colleague Robin Finesilver and I caught a train up the Elbe to Dresden on the morning of Saturday, 17 May. Our journey got off to a slightly bumpy start – a half-hour delay on the first leg set us back and then after two more changes in Leipzig and Halle, we ended up reaching our apartment in Nordhausen about an hour later than expected. But since the official IPW schedule didn’t begin until Sunday morning, we weren’t too worried. We even made it in time for dinner at our local Greek restaurant, Akropolis.
This year’s IPW featured eighteen projects led by guest lecturers from ten different European countries, with Romania being best represented. It was lovely to see many familiar faces from last year and to meet some new people, too. My own teaching contribution this year was in three parts: a student course during the IPW itself, a joint workshop with Robin at the university’s open day the next Saturday and a two-day workshop for staff the following week.
Once again, I had the pleasure of working with a fantastic group of students – this time a mix of regular German students and exchange students from the German Jordanian University in Amman. They bonded quickly and were all enthusiastic about improving their public speaking skills. Over the course of the week, we watched video tips, analysed some iconic speeches, and each participant gave two presentations. For the first, they picked a book to present from a selection I’d uploaded to Moodle in advance – titles such as The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein, Speak With No Fear by Mike Acker and Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun. For their second presentation, they chose their own subjects, ranging from mental health awareness to Bernd das Brot (a popular children’s cartoon character) and Simson motorcycles, originally manufactured in East Germany. Their final presentations were on a particular aspect of public speaking. Two groups used PowerPoint: one even included animated video, which was a nice touch. The third group took a different approach and acted out examples of body language dos and don’ts in presentations. This was clever and very well executed.
On open day, Robin and I ran a short practical workshop entitled “Speak up: warming up for a presentation”. This included vocal warm-ups and microphone practice, plus a few entertaining tongue twisters in German, Czech and English. We wrapped things up with a fun activity inspired by the BBC Radio 4 show Just a Minute. Everyone drew a topic from a hat and spoke about it for a minute using a microphone – some in German, some in English, all of them doing a great job. One participant even recognized me from the early days of the IPW, having started studying back in 1998! After our session, I joined Michael Daly’s excellent workshop, “Travelling as a student to enhance your career”, where he encouraged students to make a plan and go for it. I was also able to try my hand at Basket Beat with expert guidance from Marcel Valls.
For the two-day staff workshop, I worked with six participants, including business owners and engineering professors. They were already quite confident, as the Just a Minute icebreaker quickly revealed. Each of them presented on both days, covering everything from more general company overviews to research on specialist subjects such as bioplastics. Their talks sparked some lively discussions, which they took turns to moderate. I gave feedback on various aspects of the presentations – from commenting on body language to correcting seemingly miknor mistakes in slides such as using decimal commas instead of decimal points, which in fact distorts the data significantly, or pointing out wrong word stress that prevents the message from being clearly conveyed. We also watched and discussed a few videos – one with vocal warm-up tips and another containing general advice on public speaking from Canadian-American motivational speaker Brian Tracy. Although the limited time flew by, I hope the sessions were thought-provoking and that the attendees have also been able to look at the other materials I uploaded to Moodle for them. They were all very active participants and nice to work with.
As always, besides working hard, we also played hard during our stay in Nordhausen. I was particularly glad we arrived in time for Sunday’s excursion, which was also in three parts. First, we took a nostalgic steam train ride to the Rabensteiner Stollen. Then we donned hard hats and climbed aboard the Gruben-Express to descend into the old coal mine. We weren’t down there long but it gave us a real sense of what miners endured back in the eighteenth century. After that, we headed to the Titan-RT suspension bridge spanning an incredible 458.5 metres over the Bode reservoir. It might look precarious but it was in fact stable. However, it did start to sway more as a storm began brewing just as we were walking back. There were no zip lines or bungee jumps for us though we heard the screams of those who did go for these activities! We got back to Nordhausen in one piece and finished the day with a lovely working dinner at Namaste, a fabulous Indian restaurant.
The week also offered plenty of other extracurricular activities, too many to list here. I missed the Monday afternoon walk around the town due to a Zoom client meeting but made it to the traditional distillery tour and tasting afterwards. Later that evening, I participated in a fun student games night at the local library, organized by Andrew Pecchia from the Language Centre, followed by dinner with friends at Café Central – one of the few restaurants open on a Monday. It was a lovely evening all around. On Wednesday, I skipped the group visit to the sausage museum in Mühlhausen – it didn’t appeal to me as a vegetarian – and opted for a relaxing spa visit to the Badehaus instead. This was just what I needed midweek.
One of my personal highlights was Tuesday night when I had the chance to DJ at the student party at the Karzer with Michael Daly and later with Laura Trifan (as you can see in the video). A big shout-out to professional DJ Max for showing us the ropes! It was a really fun evening. We were back at the Karzer on Thursday for karaoke and pizzas from Freddy Fresh, generously provided by the IPW team. Many thanks to Chiara for driving us home afterwards! Friday, the final day of the IPW, brought a change of plan: our trip to Erfurt was cancelled due to train issues. Instead, we all met up for a wonderful dinner at Akropolis – this time with the whole group – where we were warmly welcomed by the lovely owner.
I headed back to Prague immediately after finishing the staff workshop on Tuesday and was apprehensive about making all my connections. Fortunately, even though two out of four trains were delayed, changing at Dresden-Neustadt instead of the main station saved me enough time to ensure I caught the evening train to Prague. Then I was finally able to relax in the restaurant car with a well-earned Czech beer. It was a long day, wrapping up a truly rewarding and action-packed trip. I thoroughly enjoyed both the teaching and the social side of the week. It was such a pleasure to work and spend time with so many fantastic people.
Many thanks to Jenny Ettrich and the whole IPW team for keeping everything running so smoothly, to Kathleen Hahnemann and Martin Groß for organizing the staff course, and to Franziska Zimmermann from the Media Centre for all the technical support. And of course, I would also like to thank the university’s President Jörg Wagner for the invitation. I certainly hope to return next year.
Blog post edited by Robin Finesilver