Di­gital teach­ing: train­ing for more free­dom in teach­ing and learn­ing

Whether it's online lectures, take-home exams or zoom lectures: it's hard to imagine university teaching without digitalisation. Digital teaching offers great potential for innovative teaching and learning - and last but not least, it also provides students with the necessary skills for entering the digital world of work. The German Council of Science and Humanities proves it: Digitisation ensures a leap in quality in teaching and studying and a better teaching, learning and study culture. At HNU, digital tools and formats in teaching are promoted accordingly in order to create a solid basis for successful online teaching. However, digital teaching is not a self-perpetuating process: it requires well-founded competences on the part of the teachers and constant further development. This know-how is provided by the Centre for Digital Teaching (ZDL), which offers teachers at HNU a comprehensive range of services and further training to accompany and support them.

The portfolio of the staff at the ZDL is long: they advise on the use of e-learning methods, design and implement digitally supported course formats together with the lecturers, offer appropriate qualification in the form of further training and coaching, maintain the central information service - the "Infothek Digitale Lehre" -, moderate networking events and exchange formats such as the e-learning café, administer and support platforms and tools for digital teaching and represent the HNU in regional and supra-regional working groups and networks in the field of digital teaching. Digital tools and methods have not only been an integral part of teaching at HNU since Corona: Moodle has been the HNU-wide learning platform since 2008, the first video lectures and blended learning formats were used as early as 2012, and the foundation of the Centre for Digitisation in 2018 laid the foundation for a strategic anchoring of digitisation in studying and teaching.

As places of encounter, participation and cooperation, universities rely on presence in teaching and learning - but this is by no means a contradiction to digital teaching. Digital teaching is neither a substitute nor a copy of analogue teaching, but an independent, promising form of teaching and learning. "Digital elements have basically been an integral part of teaching and learning for many years - the added value comes from the balanced mix of methods," explains ZDL director Tobias Ademmer. He and his staff see analogue and digital in this context as complementary spheres, not as opposites. Accordingly, digital teaching is not in competition with face-to-face teaching, but enriches it. "Digital tools and formats expand our didactic toolbox," says Tobias Ademmer. "They offer an expanded treasure trove of possibilities for achieving individual teaching goals even better".

The ZDL offers comprehensive access to this didactic toolbox. The bandwidth of the use of digital tools ranges from supplementing classroom teaching to blended learning formats to completely virtual offers. The ZDL has the right support for all needs. The team advises on new teaching and learning concepts and supports the introduction of new methods and tools - individually. "There is no one-size-fits-all solution," Tobias Ademmer emphasises. "The digital tools and formats must fit the individual goals and framework conditions of the teachers." The goal of the ZDL is to enable the greatest possible teaching diversity and to use digital tools and formats in a target- and needs-oriented way - and in the process to generate joy in experimentation and to release creativity.

Even small steps can make a big difference: It is important to build on what already exists and then develop the concept further, explains Tobias Ademmer. One way to do this is to pick individual elements from an existing course, implement them in a new way and then evaluate them. Together with the ZDL, teachers can develop a suitable concept and implement it step by step - from a single learning activity such as a quiz to an entire course, each small and large component is accompanied by the ZDL team, even over several semesters. In addition to advice from the e-learning experts, qualified e-scouts can be called upon - student employees who provide selective support in the implementation of digital methods in teaching. The ZDL also focuses on synergies: under the keyword "shared content", it tries to promote the potential of collective learning activities for several teachers.

After attending a ZDL training course, teachers are comprehensively equipped for digital teaching: they can simplify work processes from script provision to learning success checks to hand-ins and expand their communication channels with students - for example, via group messages and central information provision. As Martin Schwabegger-Schäufele explains, teachers are also introduced to helpful digital tools for collaboration within a course: "Here, for example, we introduce online collaboration for idea generation or show how group work processes can be supported by digital whiteboards". Breakout sessions and live quizzes increase interaction, even in face-to-face events. Participants learn how learning units can be provided flexibly in terms of time and place and how self-directed learning can be supported. They are prepared to motivate students to keep an eye on their own learning status and to increase the transparency of their courses in terms of organisation, learning objectives, learning content and examination modalities.