Strategies for Skills Acquisition: Innovative Teaching Concepts in Teacher Training, digitally enhanced (SKILL.de)

Since 2016, in the project 'Strategies for Skills Acquisition: Innovative Teaching and Consultation Concepts in Teacher Training' (SKILL), scientists at the University of Passau have been working to close the gaps between scientific discipline, teaching methodology and educational sciences. In the extension phase between now and 2023, the project, funded by in the program 'Quality Offensive in Teacher Training', a joint initiative by the German Ministry of Education and Research and the federal states, aims in particular to create a basis on which teachers at universities and schools can not only help to configure the 'digital turn' in the education sector, but are also verifiably able to deliver successful tuition by digital means. In the second funding phase, 'SKILL' will become 'SKILL.de'. The suffix '.de' stands for 'digitally enhanced', and for preparing trainee teachers even more specifically for the tasks they will face at schools and universities, which are changing in the context of digitalisation, and to develop training facilities and teaching components for the deployment of digital media. 

The aim is to improve the consolidation and visibility of teacher training even more, both inside and outside the University of Passau. The project is supported by the Centre for Teacher Training and Teaching Methodology at the University of Passau (ZLF), in collaboration with 18 scientists from various different faculties at the university. Also involved as partners are the government of Lower Bavaria, the ministerial commissioner for secondary schools in Lower Bavaria, and 12 project and 12 accompanying schools in Bavaria.

With SKILL.de, the University of Passau is reacting to the pivotal process of change in our times – digitalisation. Scientists from several faculties are carrying out basic research into its societal impacts. The teachers in the classrooms will be assuming a decisive role in the configuration of our digital present and future. SKILL.de aims to prepare those studying to be teachers in Passau for that task.

Learning with and about media in the 'classroom of the future'

What has so far been the 'heart' of the project, the didactic laboratory, with its nickname 'classroom of the future', in which experiments can be carried out very practically with new media and methods, continues to be an important field of work. In SKILL.de, the aim is to continue to develop that field. As from 2020, it is accompanied by the 'staff room of the future', which has been financed with funds from the Federal State of Bavaria. The SKILL.de project, above all, aims to make concrete changes in higher education teaching as regards the 'digital university' and test the impacts of those changes on student learning. Tuition components for schools will be developed and tested together with the partner schools. The central idea is to promote not only subject-specific learning, but at the same time also learning with and about media.

Further development of the cooperation between school and university

"In the mid-term, regardless of the type of school and school subject, all those studying to be teachers should be able to acquire qualifications in digitally enhanced tuition and critical skills relating to media reflection, media production and media use", explains Professor Jutta Mägdefrau, who has overall leadership of the project. "SKILL.de also works to promote cooperation between schools and universities, to provide a qualification programme for teachers at the university itself, and to test the teaching components that have been developed directly in the schools. Altogether, the further development of this cooperation between schools and universities is particularly important to us, so that all the phases of teacher training can be better combined." All the school cooperation will be accompanied conceptionally by the department of didactic innovation at the ZLF, which was newly set up during the initial funding phase. "The strengths of the SKILL project so far will be carried forward: the close connection of scientific discipline, teaching methodology and educational sciences, and above all the testing of new forms of tuition and the reflected deployment of media", says deputy project leader Professor Jan-Oliver Decker. "Reflected deployment of media doesn't just mean deploying didactic media precisely in teaching; it also means disseminating reflection skills which are essential in the modern media world, so that media and information amenities can be examined critically in terms of information and media literacy." 

SKILL.de for students

Those studying to be teachers benefit from SKILL.de through the didactic innovation rooms 'classroom and staff room of the future' and from a consultation network which has already been established and is specially coordinated to their needs. In the didactic laboratory, students can not only take part in events with innovative teaching-and-learning formats, but also try out teaching themselves in a relaxed atmosphere or initiate projects of their own.

The project 'Strategies for Skills Development: Innovative Teaching Formats in Teacher Training, digitally enhanced (SKILL.de) – an inter-faculty project by the University of Passau for teacher and structural development in the Quality Offensive Teacher Training', is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Go to http://skill.uni-passau.de for detailed information on the project.