Due to the abundance of very good submissions for the internal teaching award, Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences awarded two special prizes during the 2021 New Year's Reception, for the first time and perhaps uniquely, in addition to its own teaching award.

With the "Newcomer Award," a one-time special prize for newcomers to online teaching, the university honored Prof. Dr. Markus Schwarz from the Faculty of Business and Economics for his implementation of the mandatory module "Foreign Trade for Industrial Engineers" as an online format.

"Prof. Schwarz found himself in a doubly challenging situation since the summer semester of 2020," said Prorector Prof. Dr. Angelika Altmann-Dieses in her laudation. "Like all of us, he faced an unexpectedly digital semester, but beyond that, he still knew our university very little because he was only newly appointed this summer semester." He first saw his students in person after classes ended during exams in July. In light of this, the university would like to honor him for his outstanding implementation of the required Foreign Trade module for industrial engineers in the 3rd and 4th bachelor's semesters in an online format. He offers the module as an inverted classroom, where students learn the content with lecture videos. In the online event, questions are then solved together in the group to consolidate and transfer the knowledge. Prof. Schwarz additionally accompanies this with virtual project work in small groups on practical problems, occasional lectures by external speakers, and a forum on the ILIAS learning platform for clarifying questions. "Very congratulations on this remarkable start as a professor at our university!" emphasized Prof. Dr. Angelika Altmann-Dieses in conclusion.

Awarding Prof. Dr. Markus Schwarz in the video of the New Year's reception from min. 20.54.