Overview

• The social lives of human beings in highly-developed societies are influenced by individualisation processes. While the forms of life are becoming pluralized, the vitae of human beings have become flexible. This fact is mainly revealed by the connection between educational processes and work. “Lifelong Learning” is an omnipresent term. Learning has become a permanent task, which is accompanied by the programmatic postulation for self-controlled learning processes of adults.
• Computer-assisted learning arrangements in further education are to give special consideration to the heterogeneity of educational, professional and life biographies. An important aspect is communication, interaction and feedback from tutors and other students. Feedback measures represent a tool for supporting individualised learning. Feedback has the potential for the individual and efficient acquisition of knowledge in computer-assisted learning environments.
• The dissertation deals with a concrete offer of further education and develops a model with the aid of which decisions on the configuration of individualised further education are to be reached.

The project examines the future tasks of pedagogy of religion and its characteristic fields of action.

• Explorative data analysis is increasingly applied in all scientific areas. The analysis of empirical data represents a key qualification which has to be tediously acquired by mathematicians, natural scientists, engineers, social scientists and economic scientists, either during their studies or in the course of initial research projects.

• Statistical questions are often considered to be confusing and difficult. For many students data analysis constitutes an abstract process which underlies firm regulations without any constructive or explorative elements. Statistical methods are applied in a purely mechanical manner without any intuitive approach. This leads to the fact that data analyses do not represent any creative constructive acts which result in interpretable and significant statistical models.

• Modern mathematical approaches to data analysis, for example the interactive statistical graphics, are hardly applied. Thus, many scientists are not equipped with the central tools necessary to judge the quality of the data. Explorative data analysis – backed by logical considerations – enables scientists to find unknown connections in the data and problems during the survey or with respect to data quality. Due to a mechanic approach in the data analysis, gross misinterpretations often occur, since the user is not aware of the rules of translation from reality into the data set, ie into the language of mathematics. The interpretation of a statistical analysis is nothing but a retranslation from the language of mathematics into reality. Such a translation, however, will only be correct if the rules of translation are clear and known to the user from the very beginning.

• It is of major importance for students of explorative data analysis to learn how to use the tools of data analysis, handle real data sets and interpret them in their real environment. Didactic data sets lacking a connection to a real problem are not suited to represent the principles of explorative data analysis and to ensure that students really understand this method. In order to process real data sets it is indispensable to apply interactive statistical graphics to real data sets. In this context, interactivity does not only mean menu-controlled user guidance but a direct dependence (dynamic connection) between the individual application windows. That is to say changes made in one window directly effects the other windows. This interactivity can only insufficiently be demonstrated and explained by manuals, tutorials, help functions of programmes or static whole-class teaching.

• Since the explorative data analysis is based on the computer and interactive software, it is suggested to use congruent E-learning concepts in teaching explorative data analysis. In interpreting difficult data sets it has become evident that it is important to cooperate with other mathematicians to allow a comprehensive analysis and interpretation of the data sets. For this reason, it is suggested to use cooperative didactical concepts for learning to use data analysis. In this respect, too, E-learning seems to be a suitable method, since students may exchange their ideas via forums, wikis, video conferences, etc and can work on a problem in a cooperative manner. Students are often confronted with the problem that their concepts of mathematics learned at school are unsuitable to form a skeleton for a new learning content. To re-adjust the learning skeleton it might be useful to use analogies. E-learning offers perspectives in this respect, too, since due to analogous structures elements of data analysis can be attributed to elements of an E-learning platform, which thus creates added value for the students.

• The previously mentioned aspects led to the idea to provide an E-learning/Blended learning platform for students and experts (scientists) who want to learn explorative data analysis.

During the past 10 years the term „systemic-constructivistic“ has come to stand for a new approach which has gradually been received in religious didactics, too. However, this concept of a systemic-constructivistic didactics and pedagogics at the same time fascinates and frightens the students of religious didactics. Those in favour of this concept see a chance of adapting the pedagogics of religion to the new educational-political and cultural developments and to meet the challenges of the era following the PISA studies. A constructivistically-oriented didactics of religion intends to help pupils integrate their life worlds and life histories, individualise learning processes and strengthen their communicative skills. Critics of didactical constructivism claim that religion and constructivism are principally incompatible. The project examines whether and to what extent the concept of systemic-constructivistic didactics and pedagogics is compatible with didactics of religion, and which impulses will be generated for a Bible didactics which is not primarily text-based but on subject-based.

• Due to the progress in medicine, information technology and communication technology, doctors will increasingly be required to qualify themselves in the years to come. In addition, the structure of patients, due to the demographic change, will undergo great changes. As a consequence, doctors will have to adapt themselves to new professional conditions and require special qualifications.
• The response of health politics to the qualification requirements has consisted in laying down a statutory regulation (duty for doctors to undergo further training measures). On the other hand, further training measures have always been voluntary and are firmly rooted as a moral obligation in medical ethics and the licence of doctors to practice the medical profession.
• New media for learning purposes (E-learning) are increasingly being used in further training measures for doctors. Due to the statutory regulations which have recently been introduced, favourable frame conditions have been created for didactically and psychologically rather simple E-learning solutions in the form of web-based trainings (WBT) which are characterised by the term online-CME (Continuing Medical Education).
• By contrast, there exist innovative E-learning projects in the form of online communities supporting doctors to find solutions to common medical problems. Doctors have often complained about lacking opportunities to meet like-minded or to regularly attend in-class lectures. A solution to these problems may consist in online communities as informal, self-organised learning forms.
• The project deals with the obligation and/or will to attend further training measures, as well as the comparison of formal and informal learning processes.

• To enable students to learn in a self-controlled and self-organised manner has been described as an important pedagogical goal for years. Increasingly, students will be required to define their needs, choose material, etc in order to cope with the professional and practical requirements of the 21rst century. For this reason, it is important to support the required competencies.

• Due to the increasing availability of web technologies in educational institutions, households and work environments, new possibilities have arisen to support self-organised learning as well as to establish tools and action patterns which can be used in different areas of life.

• A particular feature of self-organised learning projects lies in the fact that their process behaviour is hardly foreseeable, goals and strategies change and expectations have to be adjusted.

• While conventional instruction design tries to anticipate and shape learning processes as completely as possible, new methodological and technological ideas are required for the support of self-organised knowledge construction.

• In this context dynamic systems for “personal web publishing” and “weblogging” are a promising technology for a “learning environment design” which can meet the special requirements of self-organised learning processes.

• The term “narrating” is defined in various ways in the German-speaking region. Even reference literature contains inconsistencies with respect to the form and content of oral narrating.
• Compared to other forms of art, there does not exist any didactics for free, oral narrating which exceeds a descriptive claim. In contrast to other forms of art, free, oral narrating has suffered the irretrievable loss of all known oral traditions.
• Apart from training courses in presentation and rhetoric, people have little awareness of narrative speaking.
• Narrating is becoming increasingly popular, which is reflected by the growing number of visitors attending narration events. It seems that more and more people long for an oral exchange in the form of stories. Does this fact represent a renaissance, a fashion, a counter movement to medialisation or rather a further development of oral narration?
• Requirements in primary schools: the current curriculum for Bavarian primary schools, dated July 2000, for the first time contains the subject “telling each other stories” and “listening to each other” as a part of German lessons. Pedagogues, however, are only insufficiently prepared for this subject.

The project i-literacy aims to support students in developing extensive abilities to use the internet and digital media for their scientific work.

• In many sectors, and particularly in the car industry, customer expectations are becoming more and more sophisticated. Many companies therefore aim to determine customer desires and to incorporate them into product development at an early stage.
• There exists a multitude of information sources about and from customers, which is a typical feature of the automobile industry (and beyond). Such knowledge exists in a highly divergent manner, for example, in the form of customer feedback and questionnaire-based quantitative surveys on product satisfaction. It is evident, however, that data are of a varying information depth, which leads to the central question of how to evaluate such knowledge for decisions in product development, and how to weight it. Do quantitative data obtained by way of customer studies automatically have a higher priority in decision-making due to their representativity? Which (significant) contributions can and must be made by qualitative data to the reasoning behind decisions?
• The dissertation deals with this practice-related problem and aims to develop a model for reaching a firm decision within the field of knowledge qualities.

• The project is part of a common dissertation project / cooperation project carried out by Carolin Dehne and Frederic Adler: “Interdisciplinary development and realisation of a blended learning project and a knowledge-based game software for students of microsystems technology.”

• The goal of the media-didactic conception lies in the development of a coherent didactics model for a blended learning arrangement which includes various approaches of teaching and learning. The various aspects of this complex object include behaviouristic, cognitive and constructivistic approaches.

• An important element of coherent didactics in this project consists in the integration of a new game-based learning approach which discusses the benefit of computer games with respect to learning and the emotional and motivational requirements which are to be fulfilled by the content of learning. This particular field of blended learning is discussed in the work of Frederic Adler.

• With respect to the didactic embedding of the blended learning arrangement, the promotion of competencies of graduates from the field of engineering will be considered.

* The social lives of human beings in highly developed societies are influenced by individualisation processes. While the forms of life have become pluralised, the lives of human beings have become more flexible. This circumstance is particularly evident in the connection between education processes and paid work. The catchword “lifelong learning” is omnipresent, learning has become a permanent task. This fact is accompanied by the programmatic demand for self control of learning processes of adults.

* Particular attention should be paid to the heterogeneity of educational, professional and life biographies by computer-based learning arrangements in further training. Important aspects are communication, interaction as well as feedback from tutors and other students. Feedback measures are used as a tool to support individual learning. Feedback has the potential for an individual and efficient acquisition of knowledge in computer-based learning environments.

* The dissertation project deals with this issue and – based on a concrete further education measure – intends to develop a model by using theoretical and practical reference lines, which can be used for finding ways of creating scenarios of individualised further training.

* The past years have seen a variety of knowledge management initiatives. Some of them have been successful, while others have not come up to expectations. The causes are complex, ranging from problems in respect of infrastructure to competence deficits of staff and structural barriers preventing knowledge from being passed on.

* A central reason for the difficulties of knowledge management in large organisations lies in a centralistic approach. Staff members frequently do not feel represented by these initiatives.

* During the past years new software tools have been introduced in companies, which are considered suitable to provide a solution for the dilemma as described above. These developments are characterised by such catchwords as “Web 2.0” and “Social software”.

LMS take on many functions in educational institutions reaching from the provision and processing of teaching material via an individual control of the learning progress to the administration of students and individual courses. Content Management Systems (CMS) are not the object of LMSNews: Only those systems which have expressly been designed and developed as LMS are dealt with in LMSNews. CMS with LMS portions (which may be integrated by plugins) are not incorporated. All LMS on LMSNews.com are available via Open Source (http://www.opensource.org/) and its German version may at least be used for free.

* Demographic surveys have shown changes in age distribution resulting in a large number of company staff retiring and taking their knowledge and experience with them. Companies in merger and acquisition processes and subjected to increasingly aggressive recruiting methods are confronted with the “Leaving Experts problem”.

* Due to company employees retiring or leaving the company for other reasons, the company loses specific knowledge, which may result in large knowledge gaps. As a consequence, the knowledge of Leaving Experts should be made transparent and provided to relevant target groups, or the competencies of Leaving Experts should be further tied to the company.

* It will be necessary that competence management and knowledge management act together and that concepts and methods are developed which take into account micro levels (eg cooperation between the Leaving Expert, his/her successor, and the application of individual knowledge, etc.).

• Teachers of all school types in Bavaria are obliged to take further training measures. They are intended to intensify the job-related as well as pedagogical skills of teachers.
• Future training methods for teachers not only comprise in-class lectures but also Live E-learning seminars.
• Such E-learning seminars are conducted by so-called teletutors who are teachers having a specific qualification in passing on their knowledge and supporting students during Live E-learning.
• The goal of the project “Teletutoring in teacher training” consists in qualifying teachers to become teletutors.
• Such training measures for teachers who want to train as teletutors are carried out by the Academy for Teacher Training and Personnel Management (Akademie für Lehrerfortbildung und Personalführung) at Dillingen and are held in “virtual classrooms”.
• In virtual classrooms the students and their teacher are at different places at the same time. They communicate via the Internet without any time delay. Virtual classrooms are thus online-based environments for synchronous learning processes.

It is our central goal to use the potential inherent to the instrument ELV for innovative teaching and learning processes. For this purpose teachers and students are to develop application methods ensuring a high level of stimulation to use this instrument.

• Emotions play a rather subordinate role in the scientific discourse and in practical life of learning. However, it is of great significance to deal with emotions especially in E learning to keep drop out rates at a minimum.

• Current E learning projects carried out by the universities of Zurich and Augsburg aim to obtain process-related information from students with the aid of so-called mood barometers or online barometers in order to secure or develop the quality of learning environments.

• The professorship for media pedagogics (Augsburg University) has placed a special emphasis on the self diagnosis of emotions. Students will be learning to constructively deal with their positive or negative emotions.

The current didactical discussion is characterised by the terms standards of education and competencies. With respect to teaching religion, subject-related competencies as well as religious, social, personal or methodological competencies are required. The project examines the interests behind the discussion of such competencies, which image of teachers is implied and in how far the curriculum theory might be reactivated. It further examines whether such concepts are compatible with the educative mission and in particular the significance of “theological competence” in teacher training.