RWTH: NRW funding for e-learning formats
In order to expand 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 of North Rhine-Westphalia, is funding a total of 18 concepts for digital teaching and learning formats with more for the second time in the “OERContent.nrw” funding line than ten million euros. The successful applications, in which at least three universities work together on e-learning formats, will be funded with up to 1.5 million euros. The projects will start in April 2022 and the universities have a total of two years to carry out the projects.
Of a total of 16 applications with RWTH participation, seven were approved, three of them as consortium leaders and four as participating consortia. During a visit, Dr. Dirk Günnewig, State Secretary in the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, now the three projects under RWTH consortium leadership the funding notice totaling around 1.3 million euros. “With OERContent.nrw, we as 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 digital studies, but about a meaningful addition to classroom teaching,
The following three applications with consortium leadership have been approved:
“FAIBLE: Didactics of computer science in building blocks for teaching” from the RWTH teaching and research area of computer science 9 – learning technologies together with the universities of Bonn, Münster, Paderborn, Oldenburg, Dresden and Duisburg-Essen
“ANDI (Anatomy Digital) – a virtual learning application for medical students and for medical health professionals” from the RWTH Institute for Neuroanatomy and from the AVMZ of the Medical Faculty of the RWTH together with the Universities of Cologne and Bonn
“BioLabSim – Biological Laboratory Simulations” of the RWTH Institute for Applied Microbiology together with the Westphalian University and the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences and the CLS of the RWTH
As a consortium, RWTH was successful in four other applications:
“ALFDyn – Adaptive Learning Environment in Dynamics as OER” under the consortium leadership of the TU Dortmund
“Alepa” under the consortium leadership of the FH Dortmund
“DiaMint” under the consortium leadership of the Westfälische Hochschule
“Operations Research (OR) for Sustainability – Energy, Mobility, Industry” under the consortium leadership of the University of Duisburg-Essen
OERContent.nrw is the largest nationwide funding line for open educational resources. Both teachers and students benefit from the e-learning offers, as they are freely accessible on the state portal for studies and teaching ORCA.nrw (Open Resources Campus NRW) after the projects have been completed. Here teachers can exchange free educational resources with each other and students can use them for self-study.