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How online teaching succeeds The digitalisation of teaching is advancing – H-BRS is well-positioned
The phrase “broaden your horizons” is recommended for many areas of life. And it applies more than ever to teaching and learning at institutes of higher education. In the course of digitalisation, the trend is moving further and further from the familiar to new patterns of action. Computer-based teaching and learning methods as well as virtual seminar rooms are becoming part of daily university life. Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg has been a pioneer in this field for years and was already working with online teaching and online lab experiments long before the Corona pandemic hit. The year 2020 was also marked by digitalisation. An overview.
competence of teachers. Under the leadership of the University of Siegen and FH Aachen University of Applied Sciences, the partners want to combine their respective focal points. The aim is to create a space in which each can learn from the other, new digital didactic concepts are developed and teachers acquire additional digital skills. The joint project is initially scheduled to run for four years and complements the Centre for Innovation and Development in Teaching’s (ZIEL) opportunities for teachers to acquire further training in higher education didactics.
Funding programme for data literacy
As a result of the Corona pandemic in 2020, higher education everywhere had to be transferred abruptly to digital teaching platforms. Thanks to years of experience with digital teaching, H-BRS managed this shift smoothly. The Institute for IT Service (ITS) expanded the systems at short notice to meet the demand for increased capacity. “If you look at the difficult conditions, it worked out wonderfully for us overall”, says Professor Marco Winzker, Vice President for Teaching, Learning and Further Education. “What helped us most was our learning management system LEA, thanks to which we were very well prepared.” This set wheels turning. “Using LEA, we set up options such as a forum for teachers where they could exchange questions and approaches to digital teaching”, says Susanne Kundmüller-Bianchini from the library’s e-learning team.
The proper handling of large amounts of data and statistical skills is what the funding programme “Data Literacy Education.nrw” by the Ministry of Culture and Science NRW, the Digital University of North Rhine-Westphalia and the Donors’ Association is all about. The aim is to teach data literacy to students throughout NRW. All universities could apply with their own teaching and learning concepts. Only ten – including H-BRS – were selected, and each will receive up to 300,000 euros from the ministry.
Consortium on Digital Teaching Competences are also to be imparted to teachers. Under the project name HD@DH.nrw, H-BRS and eleven other institutes of higher education from NRW joined forces in August 2020 to sustainably strengthen the digital
Emergency Remote Teaching