ISDS/Research/Projects

EC-TEL Workshop

DIGIVID – Digital Competences – Lessons Learned from Learning and Teaching in the CoVid-19 Pandemic

This workshop is open to all EC-TEL participants who want to share and reflect on their experiences with learning and teaching in the CoVid-19 Pandemic.

Therefore, we would like to invite you to this workshop to actively share experiences, reflect on lessons learned to improve your future practices in online teaching and learning. This includes also the digital skills you need to acquire during the pandemic and that you might improve for the future.

SAVE THE DATE: The DIGIVID Workshop at the EC-TEL 2021 will take place as follows:

  • Date: 21st of September 2021
  • Time: 9:00 - 12:00
  • The workshop will be done online – further information about the registration are coming soon.

Motivation of the Workshop

Information literacy and digital competences must be considered as fundamental competencies like the ability to read, write and calculate. The UNESCO (Catts & Lau, 2008) considers information literacy  “a basic human right” while the ALA (American Library Association, 2006 ) calls it a “survival skill in the information age”. In the digital era, information literacy and digital competences are social key competences in technology-enhanced learning settings as well as in educational/professional environments.

This holds especially true during the current CoVid-19 pandemic, where on short notice a sudden shift from traditional face-to-face to online teaching and learning took place. This shift poses challenges especially for instructors in schools and universities as well as (teacher-)students, who suddenly had to orient themselves in a completely new situation of teaching and learning, many of them having only very basic knowledge and skills w.r.t. teaching and learning in online and virtual environments. This is particularly true for teaching in an inclusive way to enable all students to participate in learning activities. Since the switch had to happen almost immediately, instructors and (teacher-)students did not have the time to acquire profound knowledge and skills for navigating the digital world and making use of the different opportunities that online-teaching and learning provide.

The workshop is related to the DIGIVID Project – an Erasmus+ project aiming at supporting individuals such as instructors in schools and universities and teacher-students in acquiring and developing digital skills and key competences to improve their (inclusive) online teaching and learning. To do so, we plan to develop the DIGIVID Curriculum based upon the DigComp 2.1 and DigCompEdu frameworks and enhanced with content for inclusive online teaching and learning strategies. Additionally, we will develop the DIGIVIDget – a teaching and learning widget that visualises the content of the DIGIVID Curriculum along learning goals (stating what skills/competences can/should be acquired) and, thus, making the DIGIVID Curriculum easily accessible to our target users.

The motivation for the workshop is to advance research and practice around digital skills and competences in higher educational settings, especially in teacher education. To this end, the workshop will bring together researchers, practitioners and educational developers in an interactive workshop format. We plan to discuss and elaborate with the participants their insights and experiences including their perceived learning needs w.r.t. (inclusive) online teaching and learning, the core learning goals for instructors and teacher-students related to (inclusive) digital teaching and learning, how explicating learning goals may help to acquire new digital competences and skills, how a tool to convey learning content via learning goals should be designed and which role technology supported reflective learning can have  in this context.

Workshop objectives and expected outcomes

Within the workshop, we will give an overview about our work with regard to learning goals and a widget visualizing these learning goals to convey digital competences and skills. Together, we will then interactively

  • Collect lessons learned and best practices w.r.t. virtual teaching and learning activities in the past year, including
    • own learning and teaching experiences 
    • learning needs
    • moments of inclusion and exclusion - barriers and opportunities for participation in online learning activities encountered or observed by the participants.
  • Discuss the potential of learning goals w.r.t. to digital competences and skills and how they can support the imparting and acquisition of (digital) competences and skills as well as motivating and inclusive online teaching and learning strategies
  • Design and evaluate together how a sophisticated visualization for conveying learning content along learning goals could look like
  • Design and evaluate technologically supported interventions for initiating reflective learning on own learning and teaching

The outcomes of the workshop will be

  • Summary of best practices / lessons learned w.r.t (online) teaching and learning: this will serve as input for all participants to improve their own virtual learning and teaching and as input for the DIGIVID project
  • A collection of ideas for new visualizations or representations for learning goals to convey digital competences and skills as well as motivating and inclusive online teaching and learning strategies
  • Implications for designs, practices or approaches for supporting reflective learning in online learning environments

Workshop Activities

The proposed workshop will be held in an interactive, virtual way.

We plan interactive sessions using brainstorming, discussion and design sessions with prepared material.

The workshop is supported with the help of digital tools. We will use an online communication/conferencing tool such as Zoom or similar, including break-out sessions for working in small groups. Additionally, we will use MIRO as an interactive whiteboard/workspace as a baseline for interactivity in our online discussions.

Agenda

Content of the Session Activities
Introduction – setting the stage Ice breaker activity with participants and presenters - setting the stage for the workshop
Collection of best practices and lessons learned w.r.t. motivating and inclusive online teaching and learning

Collecting and discussing with participants their experiences in online teaching and learning in MIRO as interactive activity: What works well, what does not work at all...

Discussing with the participants relevant competences and skills needed for online teaching and learning.

Learning Goals ... what, why, how? Presenters introduce learning goals framework, learning goals
Interactive demo of the widget followed by a design workshop

Short presentation of the learning goal widget.

Design workshop with the participants in MIRO

Summary All: Summing up the insights gained

Workshop organizers

Dr. Angela Fessl

Institute for Interactive Systems and Data Science / Graz University of Technology
Data-driven Business / Know-Center GmbH

DI Dr. Angela Fessl is working as a senior researcher in the area of technology enhanced learning at the Know-Center and is employed at TU Graz as research assistant.
Angela received her Master for Computer Science (MSc) in the field of Telematik and her PhD (with distinction) in Informatics at Graz, University of Technology. Currently her primary research interests are in the area of Technology Enhanced Learning, with focus on reflective learning at the workplace and learning goal development in educational settings. Angela is the project leader of the Erasmus+ DIGIVID project about conveying digital competences and skills for teaching and learning in higher education using a competence-based approach.

Katharina Maitz, PhD

Data-driven Business / Know-Center GmbH

Katharina Maitz is a postdoctoral researcher at the Know-Center Graz and at the Research Center for Inclusive Education (University of Graz, Austria). She holds a Master in Sociology and in 2020 she received her PhD in Inclusive Education from the University of Graz. Her main research areas are inclusive education and digitalisation, technology supported differentiated and adaptive instruction, and technology enhanced learning.

Lisa Paleczek, Ass.-Prof. Mag.phil. PhD

Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education, University of Graz

Lisa Paleczek is an assistant professor at the Institute of Education Research and Teacher Education, University of Graz. She holds a master in educational sciences (University of Graz) and a master in psychology (University of Lisbon) and she received her PhD in Inclusive Education at the University of Graz. Her main research area is inclusion in educational settings, focusing on assessment as a basis for individualized learning and instruction supported by digitalisation and differentiation.

Prof. Dr. Monica Divitini

Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Monica Divitini is professor of Cooperation Technology at the Department of Information and Computer Science, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Aalborg University, Denmark.  Her research interests lie primarily in the area of cooperation technology in knowledge intensive settings, with focus on engagement and interaction. She is also interested in Computer Science Education, at secondary and tertiary level. She is coordinator of the TESEO Lab initiative (http://research.idi.ntnu.no/teseo/), focusing on issues related to cooperation, social interaction, and learning. She is part of the management team of Excited, the Norwegian Center for Excellence in IT education (https://www.ntnu.edu/excited), with responsibility for IT education in K-12.

Assoc. Prof. Majid Rouhani

Department of Computer Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Majid Rouhani is an associate professor and has a research background, substantial industry experience, and a teaching portfolio. His research interest is computing education. He has approximately seven years of teaching experience from college and university and more than 19 years of experience in software engineering from the industry.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Köhler

Education Sciences Department / Institute for Vocational Education and Didactics / Educational Technology Chair
Media Centre / Director / Technische Universität Dresden

Thomas Köhler works as Professor for Educational Technology at the TU Dresden (Dresden University of Technology) Institute for Vocational Education, since 2005. He studied at Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (Germany) and Swarthmore College (USA), holds degrees in psychology and sociology, received his Ph.D. in communications psychology from FSU Jena in 1999 and a Facultas Docendi in Learning-Teaching Research and Multimedia Learning from Potsdam University (Germany) in 2006. Besides he serves as Director of the TU Dresden Media Center, as Chairmain of the Society of Media in Science and as a board member of the Leibniz Research Alliance for Open Science. Further Information: https://www.tu-dresden.de/bt // https://www.gmw-online.de // https://www.leibniz-openscience.de
Contact
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Workshop organizers:

  • Dr. Angela Fessl
  • Katharina Maitz, PhD
  • Lisa Paleczek, Ass.-Prof. Mag.phil. PhD
  • Prof. Dr. Monica Divitini
  • Assoc. Prof. Majid Rouhani
  • Prof. Dr. Thomas Köhler