Fellowships for innovation in digital academic teaching

With the use of ChatGPT (and comparable chatbots) as an ‘aid’ in the preparation of seminar papers and theses, the fundamental question arises in university teaching as to what extent written forms of examination, such as term papers, represent an appropriate examination format. The project ‘Podcasts as a digital examination format’ is concerned with developing a taxonomy of podcasts as an examination format in the sense of constructive alignment from the research literature to date and proposing assessment standards according to the different learning objectives. This will be verified with experts. The results will be used to apply podcasts in university teaching in an even more targeted manner.

The accelerating pace of digitalisation also presents the humanities disciplines with the challenge of having to adapt their teaching concepts. The planned teaching innovation ‘DigiHistDB’ is therefore intended to develop a self-study module to build up data (banking) skills for the study of history. Two courses will serve to lay the necessary foundations and evaluate the concepts required for the successful creation and implementation of a self-learning module for dealing with historical issues using 21st century tools. To this end, skills in data modelling and collection, database creation and visualisation, as well as the interpretation of results and critical reflection on work with digital humanities methods will be taught. The self-study module will be designed in such a way that it can also be used as part of other history degree programmes and adapted for other humanities subjects.

With the Academic Studio, a workshop is to be established for the creation of digital teaching and learning content. It's mainly by and for students of physics and other STEM subjects, , from which, however, other students and teachers at schools can also benefit. The digital content is to be made available in addition to the university's normal offerings, for example in the form of supplementary courses for research-related special topics, but also specially prepared didactic material, for example for student teachers. At the same time, the Academic Studio serves as a technological playground and development platform. This allows students and lecturers to try out the latest technologies, learn how to use them and develop them further.

The active role that students are expected is an important aspect to play in the Academic Studio. They should help to digitally process the teaching and learning materials, make suggestions for improvements or work in the development team - in this way they gain valuable experience for their future tasks, for example in science, business or in the teaching profession.

Modern treatments for cancer patients are only possible in interdisciplinary teams. In so-called tumour boards, examination findings from different disciplines are compiled and therapy recommendations are discussed together. Participation in such tumour conferences is not yet part of the curriculum in human medicine. Therefore, the physicians Dr Marcel A. Kamp and Dr Matthias A. Mäurer have developed the now funded project "Digitale studentische Tumorkonferenz im inverted classroom-Format". In addition to specialist knowledge, the participating students are to learn how a neuro-oncological tumour board works, effective communication, the creation of personalised therapy plans as well as the discussion and consideration of ethical aspects of medical action. The courses are designed in such a way that the students prepare themselves with online material and use the event for in-depth and interactive discussion of what they have learned.

The project Digitales Lehren lernen in Deutsch als Fremd- und Zweitsprache (Learning digital teaching in German as a foreign and second language, DiLele DaF/DaZ) by Theres Werner was awarded a Fellowship für Innovationen in der Digitalen Hochschullehre Thüringen announced by Stifterverband and funded by the Thuringian Ministry of Economics, Science and Digital Society. The DiLele DaF/DaZ project addresses the current situation of distance learning with the aim of integrating this form of teaching/learning into teacher training curricula and systematically developing it further. The situation since March 2020 has made it increasingly clear that ‘digital competence [...] is a key competence of the 21st century’ (DigCompEdu 2017: 1). Academic teaching had to be converted to digital formats in a very short time without any prior testing and evaluation of these teaching-learning settings. The same applies to the school context. This is where teaching innovation comes in. In a course, students in teacher training try out different formats of digital teaching and learning in a protected space according to their prior knowledge and reflect on the advantages and disadvantages. Digital learning is not only a learning content, but also a learning method and learning product. The aim is to prepare the prospective teachers for their everyday teaching in a practical way.

Literature
DigCompEdu (2017): Broschüre zur digitalen Kompetenz Lehrender. https://www.pedocs.de/frontdoor.php?source_opus=23096External link  (as at 11.12.2020).

The aim of the project is to combine classroom and digital teaching for smaller lectures—hybrid teaching. For this purpose and supported by external expertise, a mobile system is to be procured, configured and programmed, which maximizes immersion, communication, and interaction. Originally designed for teaching under corona conditions, the students attending the course digitally will be enabled to participate in a way comparable to the students present through excellent image and sound quality, different image settings (‘scenes’), and interactive elements. At the same time, the advantages of digital teaching, such as permanent retrievability, are retained. The technology should be mobile, inexpensive to operate and easy to use in order to enable widespread use. After test and optimization runs in the summer semester 2021, the system is to be demonstrated with a public livestream in the winter semester using the lecture ‘Physikalische Grundlagen Erneuerbarer Energien’.

The project E-Portfolio als studienbegleitendes Prüfungsformat is an up-to-date approach combining the content-related challenges of studies and research in the humanities in the modern world, in which excellent applicants for Master's programmes—as well as their teachers—(want and have to) act internationally, digitally competent and thus less dependent on a specific location, with a study programme concept that wants to be practical, interdisciplinary, and prepare for a career.

The project is to be used as a pilot project in the newly created Master's programme ‘Literary Translation’ and, if successful, will subsequently be presented to other (especially interdisciplinary, international and practice-oriented) Master's programmes as a model for possible integration into other curricula.

The funded project serves both to optimize the didactic interplay of digital teaching content and face-to-face events and to actively involve students in the design of new digital teaching content for the next generations of students.

Specifically, this project is used in the context of a module attended by students with different levels of prior knowledge. In order to take into account the heterogeneous knowledge base of the students, material from a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is already being used in parallel with the course, which covers the necessary basics and further information for the topics addressed in the module. However, the heterogeneous prior knowledge can only be mitigated to a limited extent by the MOOC content due to the different learning rhythms of the students.

Within the framework of the fellowship, a blended learning model is to be designed and implemented, which aims at the focused integration of e-learning content of the MOOC and the face-to-face events. In addition, a further deepening of what has been learned is to take place through active co-creation of new digital content. After testing, this concept is to be further expanded in order to use the newly created digital content as an additional learning basis for the next generations of students.

In the Bachelor's programme in Psychology at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the social psychology module ‘B-PSY-106’ is to be redesigned with regard to digitization and didactics. The fact that certain contents can be standardized at high level, while the students are individual students are good reasons for the increased use of digital tools. Thus, a digital Flipped Classroom is to be designed and implemented within the framework of the fellowship.

The use of teaching innovation pursues a range of goals, the most important being that

• several hundred students of the basic subject of social psychology acquire deep and lasting knowledge,
• key psychological competencies in perception, thinking and action processes are better developed and trained, and
• students of psychology are more adequately prepared for the living and working world 4.0.

The concept is to be evaluated, improved and adapted accordingly during the term of the fellowship. At the end of the project, the innovation should be transferable to other modules of the psychology study programme, especially the basic subjects such as developmental, perceptual or personality psychology.

Digitization is increasingly shaping our everyday lives and changing education. The fact that digital teaching and learning settings open up new possibilities for enriching, flexibilizing and individualizing learning processes is now undisputed in educational policy discourse. Therefore, all educational institutions are nowadays tasked with developing and implementing digitally supported learning formats.

However, in teacher training, the digitization of education brings new challenges that go far beyond the mere integration of digital media into university teaching. Prospective schoolteachers need to acquire specific competences in order to find their way in an increasingly digitalized school landscape. This project aims to formulate these necessary competences and make them an essential part of the subject-didactic curriculum in the Romance Studies teacher training programme.

A student body that is heterogeneous in terms of performance and motivation has so far mainly been confronted with learning settings for homogeneous groups (‘one-size-fits-all’). However, heterogeneity-oriented programmes are better suited to ensure learning success for all. The challenges posed by heterogeneous student groups can be addressed with digital teaching-learning offerings. Digital differentiation matrices in particular are a didactic approach for heterogeneity-sensitive teaching. In the planned project, differentiation matrices for teacher training are to be developed. These contain content that is complex to varying degrees. They can be worked on in a digital tool throughout the entire teacher training programme, whereby certain minimum standards are to be achieved. The learning speed and the way in which students achieve these standards may explicitly vary. After a trial period, the digital tool is to be made widely usable in five areas of teacher education.

Contact person:

Dr Julia Dietrich
Email: julia.dietrich@uni-jena.de
Phone: +49 3641/945347

In the subject of ‘Older German Literature’ at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, students have a very heterogeneous and low level of knowledge. In the introductory seminars of the compulsory module ‘Older German Literature I’, the lecturers of the department try to counter this problem and therefore impart knowledge of literature and linguistics. However, the students' increase in knowledge is very small, as the time for teaching Middle High German language competence in the module's seminars is very limited.

I would like to address this problem with the MOOC ProMihD—an online preparatory course in which students acquire a basic knowledge of Middle High German and its indexing in 3 weeks during the semester break.

The respective seminars in ‘Older German Literature I’ build on this knowledge and apply it to the respective seminar subject, thus consolidating and expanding it. The course is to become an integral part of the module.

Contact person:

Jennifer Koch
Email: jennifer.koch@uni-jena.de
Phone: +49 3641/944205