For the third time, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia is supporting the creation of freely available digital teaching and learning materials with the OERContent.nrw funding line - the largest in Germany for open educational resources. At Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, three projects in the Faculties of Applied Social Studies and Electrical Engineering are benefiting from this.
Freely available teaching and learning materials (Open Educational Resources, OER) increase global educational equality. "As open digital learning formats, they can be sustainably adapted by teachers for their own teaching - for example as online courses, learning videos or learning modules," says Dr. Sina Nitzsche from the Institute for Higher Education Didactics at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts. "OER are becoming increasingly popular in this country and are also increasing the social responsibility of universities."
Fachhochschule Dortmund has acquired three cross-university collaborative projects for digital teaching and learning formats.
Projects at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Building blocks of computer-aided data analysis
Digital case work - transdisciplinary self-assessment in educational and health-related contexts
GET it digital
All application projects were supervised by the Institute for Higher Education Didactics. Dr. Sina Nitzsche welcomes the funding approval: "The fact that we were able to further increase our funding quota in the third round of calls for proposals is a great success. What's more, the consortium lead is once again a female professor for the second time in a row. This is a strong sign of female empowerment in the STEM subjects at Fachhochschule Dortmund."
The teaching and learning materials produced in the projects will be made available on the state portal for studying and teaching ORCA.nrw (Open Resources Campus NRW). In addition to the teaching and learning materials, didactic concepts, evaluations, examination documents and quality assurance concepts are also being developed in all funded projects so that teachers throughout NRW and beyond can benefit from the innovative teaching and learning materials in the future.
Background to the OERContent.nrw funding line
A total of 68 consortium projects from universities, universities of applied sciences and colleges of art and music have applied for the third round of funding from the Ministry of Culture and Science (MKW) and the Digital University NRW (DH.NRW). The twelve most successful applications in the current funding round, in which at least three universities work together on digital and freely available OER learning materials, will receive funding of up to 1.5 million euros. The total volume of the current call for proposals amounts to around seven million euros. The projects at the university of applied sciences will start on September 1, 2023 with a planned funding period of two years.
In the past, the MKW has funded the projects TZ Digital(Opens in a new tab) (Prof. Matthias Müller(Opens in a new tab) , Faculty of Mechanical Engineering), Introduction to Business Studies(Prof. Claus Vormann(Opens in a new tab) , Faculty of Business Studies), EILD(Opens in a new tab) and ALepa(Opens in a new tab) (Prof. Inga Saatz(Opens in a new tab) , Faculty of Computer Science).
Statement by NRW Science Minister Ina Brandes
"Personal contact between teachers and students is unique and cannot be replaced by anything else. Nevertheless, the coronavirus pandemic has taught us that digital teaching can be extremely effective. There is a lot of potential in smart online seminars to optimally complement analog teaching: E-learning offerings are available everywhere and at all times. This flexibility creates new freedom for teachers and students. That's why we want to further expand online teaching!"