State Funding for E-Learning Formats
State Secretary Dr. Dirk Günnewig hands over funding certificates to RWTH projects amounting to around 1.3 million euros.
In order to expand upon the current progress in digital teaching at universities in a sustainable and quality-assured manner, the Ministry of Culture and Science, together with the Digital University NRW, is funding a total of 18 concepts for digital teaching and learning formats with more than ten million euros for the second time in the "OERContent.nrw" funding line. The successful applications, in which at least three universities collaborate on e-learning formats, will be funded with up to 1.5 million euros. The projects will start from April 2022, and the universities will have a total of two years to complete the projects.
Of a total of 16 applications with RWTH participation, seven were approved, three of them as consortium leaders and four as participating consortium members. During a visit, Dr. Dirk Günnewig, State Secretary in the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, presented the three projects under RWTH consortium leadership with the funding certificate totaling around 1.3 million euros. "With OERContent.nrw, we at the state government want to support digital teaching at universities with the development of freely accessible, digital teaching and learning content. Our goal is to further develop digital higher education into a model for the future. This is not about an online course of study, but rather a meaningful supplement to classroom teaching in order to combine the strengths of the digital with the strengths of the analog in a meaningful way - RWTH Aachen University has demonstrated precisely this with its successful applications," said State Secretary Günnewig.
The following three projects led by RWTH were approved for funding:
- FAIBLE: Didactics of Computer Science in Building Blocks for Teaching – RWTH's Learning Technologies Research Group in collaboration with the universities of Bonn, Münster, Paderborn, Oldenburg, Dresden, and Duisburg-Essen
- "ANDI (Anatomy Digital) - a virtual learning application for students of medicine and for medical health professionals" by the RWTH Institute of Neuroanatomy and the AVMZ of the Faculty of Medicine of RWTH Aachen together with the Universities of Cologne and Bonn.
- "BioLabSim - Biological Laboratory Simulations" of the RWTH Institute for Applied Microbiology together with the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences and the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences as well as the CLS of RWTH.
RWTH will be involved in the following four approved projects as a consortium partner:
- ALFDyn – Adaptive Learning Environment for the Subject of Dynamics as an OER, led by TU Dortmund University
- Alepa, led by Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts
- DiaMint, led by the Westphalian University of Applied Sciences (WH)
- Operations Research (OR) for Sustainability – Energy, Mobility, Industry, led by the University of Duisburg-Essen
OERContent.nrw is the largest funding source in Germany for open educational resources. Both teachers and students can benefit from the online course offerings, as they will be made freely available on the ORCA.nrw website. The website offers instructors the opportunity to share free educational resources with each other. Students are encouraged to use these high-quality online resources for self-study purposes.
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State Secretary Dr. Dirk Günnewig (2nd from left) hands over funding certificates for digital teaching and learning formats - on his left Professor Ulrik Schröder, on his right Professor Aloys Krieg, Vice-Rector for Teaching and Learning at RWTH, Professor Lars Blank and Dr. Tim Clarner.