Manuela Pietraß
Digital Media in Academic Teaching – An indroduction
Claudia de Witt
Communication in Online Learning Communities: Digital teaching in higher education as reflected by pragmatism
The author discusses a media-didactic approach to digital teaching in higher education which has its origin in the pedagogical pragmatism of John Dewey. Dewey’s approach is taken up and further developed in the concept of the Community of Inquiry, which contains fundamentals for an online community doing research. In this, communication among learners is considered an essential prerequisite for attaining the ability to reflect and judge on an academic level. Using the Hagen Open University as an example, the author shows how, in the field of open-university courses, the communicative exchange among students in the sense of a learning community can be promoted through the use of digital media (e-learning).
Frank Fischer/Karsten Stegmann/Christof Wecker/Ingo Kollar
Online Discussions in Academic Teaching: Cooperation scripts as a means of improving specialist debates
Unless they are adequately structured, online discussions in university teaching often reveal a suboptimal level of quality. The authors present empirical studies and recent research topics concerning the structuring of online discussions by means of collaboration scripts. The results of these studies show that collaboration scripts can be an effective means of providing instructional support for argumentation among students in online discussions. With regard to the acquisition of knowledge through online discussions, these studies also allow to differentiate between facilitative, ineffective, or even impeding types of collaboration scripts.
Manuela Pietraß
Digital Presence – the didactic surplus value of media design
Recent investigations of the new possibilities of computer-mediated communication focus on the didactics of e-learning. Another area in which digital media open up perspectives conducive to learning is that of the different means of design. This aspect had been discussed quite intensely during the 1990s, within the context of “multimedia”; however, this debate was only partially continued within the field of e-learning. Based on the concept of presence, i.e. those parts of the aesthetic experience generating sensuality, the author examines in how far the digital possibilities of design offer a didactic potential for teaching in higher education.
Heidi Schelhowe
Interaction Design: How can digital media be turned into educational media
The computer constitutes a culmination of abstraction and formalization. At the same time, however, this new medium also allows for a highly concrete interaction which does not even need the distance of language or the representation in pictures. Concepts of interaction developed by computer science such as “tangible interfaces“ or “body-interaction“ allow for an immersive, intuitive, and action-oriented use. If computers are to serve human education, and not merely purposeful action, then more has to be considered than to simply allow for them to be used intuitively or to make them appear as if they would enable an immediate, direct-manipulative interaction. Complex learning consists in moving back and forth between immersion and reflection. When designing software for educational processes, digital media must not remain “mere“ tools or media – transparent for the access to information or virtual objects; rather, a reflexive design is needed through which the computer itself and the modeling processes hidden behind its surface become visible. The inherent models and their formalized expression have to be made accessible and tangible. The article discusses how the computer can become a medium of education and why educational science needs to “inform“ the design of digital learning applications.
Heinz-Werner Wollersheim/Maren März/Jan Schminder
Digital Examination Formats
On the changes in the examination culture and examination practice in modular courses of studies
The recent debate on standardized IT-supported examinations at universities refers to fundamental questions concerning the relation between teaching and examining. It is within the logic of the Bologna Process that examinations are oriented by a graduate profile described through competences. The development within the medical field is used as a comparative example, – the areas of knowledge to be examined being hardly any less complex than those of the educational-scientific field. The special case of standardized comprehensive written examinations is investigated more closely.
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Manfred Hofer/Britta Kilian/Claudia Kuhnle/Sebastian Schmid
Do individual Values Influence Motivation and Learning Success in case of Conflicts between School and Leisure Time?
An experimental investigation
In view of high academic expectations and a broad offer of leisure time activities in the afternoons, students are torn between doing schoolwork and attending to self-determined activities. In an experiment, the authors examined whether the students´ orientation towards achievement or towards well-being influences the motivational regulation and the result of learning in the case of a conflict between study and recreation. Value orientations were activated through priming and their influence on motivational interference and success in learning scientific contents was determined. While learning, students were allowed to switch to music videos, with the number of available videos varying between one and two. The regulation of learning was ascertained by means of a questionnaire on the experience of motivational interference. Learning success was determined through a multiple choice test as well as the number of correctly reproduced elements of mapping. As was to be expected, wellness-oriented students showed a higher motivational interference than the control group, whereas students oriented towards achievement showed neither lower interference nor higher achievement. Students in the group oriented towards well-being showed higher achievement in the multiple choice test when being offered one as compared to two attractive alternative actions.
Gerhard Eberle
Methodological Weaknesses in Dagmar Haensel’s Attempt to Sketch the History of the Reception of a „School Book“
An article recently published in this journal claimed that the book “Erbe und Schicksal“ (“Genetic Inheritance and Fate“), published in 1942, played a crucial role in the present debate on special education during the Nazi era. Furthermore, the author purports to have sketched the reception of the book up to the present and to have opened up a new perspective by looking at it as a book of propaganda for schools for special education. The present critical analysis, however, shows that these claims are not tenable, respectively trite.
Johannes Giesinger
Education as a Public Good and the Problem of Justice
The normative question of how education is to be distributed among individuals can be approached from two different perspectives. On the one hand, one can ask which distribution would be adequate in view of the desired public effects of education. On the other hand, there is the question of the just distribution of the private benefit of education. Taking into consideration both perspectives, the author develops a concept of educational justice comprising three principles of distribution. Based on this, he discusses in how far a public provision, financing, and regulation of educational programs is advisable.
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