Freie Universität Berlin values excellent teaching, as it forms the basis for our students’ educational success. This is why we strive to convey its importance within and outside of the university. We promote an academic culture in which outstanding teaching aptitude and high-quality teaching are celebrated. Not only that, but we also develop a varied system of incentives to encourage quality, creativity, and innovation in teaching, and reinforce teaching qualifications as an integral component of academic qualifications. Freie Universität Berlin believes that good teaching is a joint effort that relies on active participation and a respectful dialogue about our successes and failures, learning outcomes, and plans to continuously develop university education. The university’s different status groups are engaged in a constructive dialogue with one another and operate on equal footing. Our educational community is supported by a wide array of formats for communication, networking, and interaction.

In addition to providing an education with a well-rounded curriculum, Freie Universität Berlin offers comprehensive support services to accompany students from the beginning of their studies, all the way through to their doctorate. All instructors and departments are involved in determining the subject-specific and interdepartmental aspects of these services, and due care is given to individuals’ psychological and professional needs. Along with supervisory services throughout their studies, other services include recruiting, guidance, introductory support, academic and career advising, and alumni networks. The study phases and transitional process from secondary school to university – and from university to the professional world – are actively shaped in cooperation with the relevant institutions in education, business, and society. Both prospective students and enrolled students get a realistic image of the educational options available, admission and study requirements, and their respective prospects, which makes it easier for them to choose their ideal degree program and courses. These options are designed with the heterogeneity of the student body in mind in order to facilitate the best possible environment for each individual in the academic community to develop and succeed.

Freie Universität Berlin highly values university teaching as a profession and considers it essential to our reputation as a renowned academic institution. For this reason, we promote educational training for targeted teaching skills and strive for high-quality teaching among all our instructors. We research suitable indicators, metrics, and models so that we have the data we need to modernize university teaching based on factual evidence. Instructors at all qualification stages and in all status groups – including students and doctoral students – receive support acquiring university-level teaching skills and honing their individual teaching profile as part of a quality-assured, long-term professional development policy. The professionalization of university teaching covers many areas. It includes continuing education opportunities for administrative staff involved in educational support for students and instructors. It also means building administrative units equipped with solution-oriented and target group-specific skills, who can offer services and administrative support for studying and teaching at the university. Professional university teaching also demands a high-performance IT infrastructure, excellent library facilities and services, as well as buildings designed to meet the requirements of modern teaching, learning, assessment, and advising environments.

As an institution that is itself constantly learning, education is the subject of an ongoing conversation at Freie Universität Berlin. Evidence-based, dialogue-oriented processes that meet high academic standards guarantee the superior quality of the university’s degree programs. Feedback from internal and external students and evaluations from instructors, experts from specific fields, and working professionals contribute greatly to discussions about the quality of education. The subjects, instruments, and processes of quality assurance are always adjusted to keep up with current academic, didactic, technological, and societal discourses. This encompasses openness, tapping into the potential of digital administrative, learning, and assessment systems for the further development of teaching and learning based on new data, and the widespread implementation of innovative feedback tools. Essential components of these processes include utilizing the results from these assessments, which means incorporating feedback from target groups, establishing suitable intervention measures, and enabling the participation of all status groups.