Collaboration Circle

Learn together how to learn

Working together with other students to reach their own goals in their studies. The main focus is on independent and social learning, which can be practiced here.

  • Why you should learn how to learn

    Learning is key to succeeding in your studies. The idea of lifelong learning shows that we will continue to develop in our profession and beyond, and that we can and should learn new things. Self-paced social learning is becoming increasingly important. However, this way of learning needs to be learned.

  • The benefits

    • During the Collaboration Circle, you will ...
    • learn to work on your own goals in a structured way
    • get to know learning methods and resources
    • learn together and from each other in a group
    • share your knowledge with others
    • build new networks
    • ... and much more!
  • The process

    Step 1:     Registration via e-mail: collaboration-circlemail-uni-mannheim.de

    Step 2:     Face-to-face kick off event

    Step 3:     Two self-organized peer group meetings online or face-to-face

    Step 4:     Pit stop online via MS TEAMS

    Step 5:     Three self-organized peer group meetings online or face-to-face

    Step 6:     Face-to-face closing event

    (This is a an example of what it could look like.)

Manual for download

We are pleased if students and/or lecturers continue to use the Collaboration Circle Handbook, develop it further and make it available to others. The manual is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. This means that every person may reuse, modify and republish it by stating the author.

Download (PDF)


Report on the train-the-trainer program

Zoé Theuer, student assistant in the Collaboration Circle project from May to December 2022, reports on her experiences with the train-the-trainer program “Learning in Networks”, the development and implementation of our project, and encourages future student employees to actively participate in the program, to contribute ideas and to shape your own projects as well as the collaboration in the program. The video is only available in German.

Julia Derkau

Julia Derkau

Head of Educational Innovation and Project Lead TransforMA
University of Mannheim
Center for Teacher Education and Educational Innovation
Schloss – Room EO 084
68161 Mannheim