Students are no longer digging dusty books out of their bags, but rather smartphones, tablets and laptops. Digitalization is not only revolutionizing industry, but also higher education. At least in theory.
Analogue was yesterday. Today's math student carries her collection of formulas with her as a smartphone app. Just like the Romance studies student has his French dictionary. Encyclopedia content can be easily stored in the vastness of the World Wide Web. But the digitization of knowledge assets is not just about storing knowledge. The topic of big data has even more in store for the German university landscape.
However, the question of technical equipment is not yet the focus. The overhead projector is increasingly giving way to the beamer. But in addition to lecture halls equipped for the future, digitalization is primarily about a paradigm shift. Teachers and learners should be better networked with each other. This entails possibly rethinking the top-down relationship between the two groups. Above all, it is about creating barrier-free access to research and teaching platforms as well as new ways of organizing and supervising studies.
The latter seems to be implemented more quickly than questioning well-established working methods through modern teaching methods. Almost every institution in this country now offers mobile application software that is intended to simplify the practical side of studying.
With “CampusKöln,” for example, the lecture halls and seminar rooms on the Rhine can be located more quickly. At the TU Dresden, the “navigator” helps you locate changing tables and elevators. The mobile assistant “Cassis” from the Free University in Berlin enables students to structure their everyday university life more clearly. In keeping with the motto “App in the lecture hall”, the digital companions want to create time for the essentials: the course content.
However, they do little to combat the amount of bureaucracy and multitude of administrative tasks that precede every pro seminar. And it is often the campus management systems themselves that repeatedly become a problem due to bugs and failed updates.
Smart teaching with your smartphone
There have long been presentable innovations that modernize the training process. Often in the form of pilot projects.
Bernd Becker, professor at the Institute for Computer Science at the University of Freiburg, is responsible for one of these. Becker and his team have been working on a digital communication method for several years. The result in 2014 was SMILE – “Smartphone in Teaching” – an interactive application with which students can anonymously give the lecturer direct and timely feedback during the lecture. Conversely, students can answer questions using the quiz function and receive feedback on their level of knowledge.
The Hessian private university of economics and law EBS has also set out to make everyday university life more digital. Students and teachers should be able to access timetables, teaching material and exam results from different locations and from any device. IT manager Gerald Zöllner swears by the cloud for this. “Depending on the number of enrolled students and current research projects,” he explains, “our university grows or shrinks” – and with it the demand for storage capacity. Instead of purchasing servers in the long term, EBS obtains more data volume when necessary.
But in order to stream lectures in real time, you not only need the right bandwidth, but also an adapted teaching concept. RWTH Aachen offers online courses in 30 subjects to its 42,000 international students at 260 institutes. The idea is that multimedia learning in the form of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offers the best alternative to traditional university teaching to date. The university management's credo is that the traditional attendance requirement is difficult to comply with for working people and students with children or due to other life circumstances. Not to mention individual learning and living habits.
Better than the (filmed) reality
In addition to theoretical lessons via video, RWTH Aachen's MOOCs in the subject of economics, for example, convey the actual practical experience of an automobile manufacturer using simulation games such as TransAction. The training center at Heidelberg University Hospital also deserves the title “progressive”. There, aspiring doctors can carry out deceptively real operations on screens, without any risks or side effects. The tools connected to the computers are the same as those used in the actual operating room. The same conditions prevail during the simulation as in reality.
So far, only the worlds that can be created using virtual reality glasses from the games industry are similarly spectacular. The technology required for this seems like oversized ski goggles to which your own smartphone or iPad is connected. If the wearer moves, the software automatically adjusts the environment presented to the user. This form of interaction enables completely new working and analysis methods. Architects can walk in their models. Mechanical engineers can put themselves in the position of even the smallest gear and take on new perspectives in order to better understand procedures and processes.
The message behind these playful approaches is: Putting recorded lectures online is good. Providing virtual labs and operating rooms is better.
Push boundaries, discover potential
Of course, programming neither a flight simulator nor a laboratory situation is cheap. Fortunately, that doesn't make it any less attractive. Virtual or at least partially online studying is trendy. The announcement of the "MOOC Production Fellowships" in 2013 by the Donors' Association for German Science made it clear how great the interest was on the part of both learners (more than 200,000 students enrolled in the online courses in the winter semester 2013/14) as well as the teachers and their institutions (more than 190 German universities have submitted course concepts).
However, such actions cannot hide the fact that three years later, most German universities are still limited to emails, PDFs and PowerPoint presentations. The 70 experts behind the University Forum Digitalization initiative, which has existed since March 2014, come to the conclusion: “Although the funding of digitalization takes place within the framework of funding lines such as the BMBF's Teaching Quality Pact or the Excellent Teaching Competition from the Stifterverband and KMK, it is not there in focus.« Investing in digital instruments, allowing adapted learning and testing scenarios, developing new marketing strategies and, yes, business models, in short, helping to shape the age of groundbreaking technologies, does not seem to be a priority.
Maybe the fear behind this is that lectures available as podcasts will lead to empty universities? It takes courage to see the campus as a large playground where young scientists can let off steam.
How people learn
Perhaps the problem lies more with the bad reputation of computer-obsessed teenagers. A young Danish company called Labster dispels the suspicion that students could have poorer study results due to too many gamification elements. In collaboration with Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, Stanford and Harvard Universities, Hong Kong and several more, founders Mads Bonde and Michael Bodeaker have transformed the discipline of biotechnology into a virtual three-dimensional laboratory at the participating faculties. And at the same time, the grades of 76 percent of the students improved.
This doesn't surprise American economist Erik Brynjolfsson. Numerous media reports cite his seemingly radical view, which is reflected in his book “The Second Machine Age”: “We have to fundamentally change our education system. We need to change the way people learn; Gone are the days when you just sit still and listen when you learn.«
In view of the mass refugee movements, the question of learning is not just about how, but also about who. With the Internet, free online courses can be made accessible worldwide at any time. If “promoting talent” is to be more than just a prestigious slogan, then it is also important to find these talents.
Digitalization is not only revolutionizing industry, but also higher education.
