I believe that our time is unique in the history of mankind for at least two reasons: the first is that our consciousness is taking a quantum leap in its evolution, the second is that, for the first time, mankind is facing an ecological crisis that will affect all forms of life on our planet for generations to come. The Evolution of Mind, Reality and the IQ Puzzle For a long time I believed that…
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Dedicated to my students and my teaching team @ Medienfaktur, University of Oldenburg, 9th of February 2021 Introduction and Overview This essay is about more than just hedonistic fun in hybrid (analog-digital) learning. It is about the unusual question of deep happiness and joie de vivre in so-called ‘new learning’. It is about eudaimonia – to use the Aristotelian term. After a discussion of our current societal context, I use Carol Ryff’s classic six-factor model…
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How low can you go? When it comes to Trump, he has finally demonstrated to the entire world how to successfully manipulate and radicalise almost half of Americans. He is truly a con artist extraordinaire – we have to give it to him. Trump has turned ordinary citizens into zombified haters and has managed to project his deranged mental world successfully into the minds of a large part of the American population. Alt-Right feeds straight…
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Illustration: Cover of DER SPIEGEL, Nr.6, 2017 Introduction: Assessing the Damage As an educator, how could I keep quiet? The upcoming US Elections have significant consequences for the world. In this article, I shall focus on the change in the social psychology of the United States of America during the term of Donald J Trump. To set the stage, it is helpful to recapture the trail of destruction that America ‘s 45 fifth president has…
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Digital education starts with an LMS to organise learning As a technology-savvy educator, I fell in love with Learning Management Systems (LMS) from their early beginnings. LMS organized my work better than by any analogue means, they facilitated my students’ online access to teaching- and learning materials and, in recent years, such systems allow for the more interactive realization of curricula. I remember when we installed the first Moodle versions on our local server at…
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Introduction: How have educators been coping these past months? First of all, I like to express my empathy for my readers during the COVID crisis. COVID has affected us most destructively on a systemic and on a personal level – be it the fear of infection at the workplace (or dealing with its dire consequences), the challenges of homeschooling, the missing out on education, especially for the socio-economically most disadvantaged students, the lack of comprehensive…
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All those schools and universities who already offer Blended Learning Courses have little problems of moving their classes fully online. For many others, they wished they had assistance. Here are a few links and information that might help: Good-old Skype can facilitate video chat groups up to 50 participants. Skype allows screen-sharing and provides a suitable tool for desktop-, tablet- and smartphone access alike, both for Win and iOS. If you need a bit more,…
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In a nutshell: Once we start thinking in terms of pedagogical patterns, we are handed the keys to Blended Learning. We can make informed decision about which parts of our modules to design online and which ones face-to-face. This is an introductory session that demonstrates how the world’s most complex pedagogical philosophies, such as Problem-based Learning (Barrows, 1992, 1996) and Design Thinking (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, 2020; Stanfordonline, 2016, 2018) can be conceptualized within…
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Introduction To this date, the European framework DigCompEdu (Ferrari, 2013; Redecker, 2017) is arguably the most comprehensive and well-researched policy effort to identify digital competencies for education. What makes the framework especially valuable for Higher Education is its emphasis on professional engagement as well as the integration of learner and teacher perspectives (Aagaard & Lund, 2020), emphasising the construction of knowledge, the adequacy of assessment methods and promoting an active learning approach. To this extent,…
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The following blog entry has been compiled for educators dealing with the implementation of digital CPD-programs in Higher Education. This script is a summary of experiences and thoughts during my past two years as a digital education consultant at the University of Oldenburg. Introduction One of my key insights from getting started in digital education was that digital education is not primarily about technology or providing sufficient staff training on hard- and software (which is,…
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