Research projects Informatics

In order to promote and optimise digitalisation with regard to examinations, the University of Education Karlsruhe is developing innovative examination formats that can be generalised and transferred to other higher education institutions. The recently launched higher education development programme “DiAs” (Digital Assessment – Digital, competence-oriented examinations at the University of Education Karlsruhe) is being funded by the Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (foundation for innovation in higher education teaching) with a total of 1.4 million euros and will run until 2024.

In addition to programming skills, pursuing a degree in Informatics also requires theoretical and conceptual knowledge. The assessment of these knowledge components includes multiple-choice questions, free-text answers, and tasks involving the creation of sketches and models. Until now, our university has only been able to realise this combination of tasks in examination situations by means of traditional paper-and-pencil examinations.

The existing examination regulations and limited input options on computers were obstacles to transferring these types of tasks to digital media. This meant that the advantages of computer-based tests, such as automated evaluation and feedback, could not be utilised. With regard to exams in theoretical Informatics, the challenge thus is to find a way to transfer them to digital examination formats.

Entrepreneurial IT education in the STEM subjects is of central importance for young people in order to enable them to effectively tackle future challenges and initiate STEM innovations. The aim of the EntreCoThink project is to develop hackathons to realise innovative entrepreneurial ideas in a prototype app for school education and to carry them out at secondary schools I. To this end, a service centre will be set up for teachers to support them in the independent implementation of hackathons at schools. The collaborative project between the Department of Economics and its Didactics and the Department of Informatics and Digital Education runs from 1 May 2023 to 30 April 2026 and combines Informatics education at schools with entrepreneurial thinking and acting.

In cooperation with the Hochschule Karlsruhe – University of Applied Sciences (HKA) and Furtwangen University (HFU), the “Wissensmedien” (knowledge media) research training group has established a bridge from knowledge to people in terms of didactics, media and cognitive psychology as well as technology, which is placed in an interdisciplinary framework in "five fields of knowledge”:

• Knowledge acquisition (cognition, psychology),
• Knowledge transfer (education, didactics),
• Knowledge media (information, systems, technologies),
• Knowledge interaction (interactive systems, media technology), and
• Knowledge technologies (artificial intelligence).

The InDiKo project forms part of the “Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung”, an initiative launched by the Federal Government and the Länder to enhance the quality of teacher education, and is dedicated to the sustainable integration of subject-specific digital teaching and learning concepts. As part of the project, our university is extending and enhancing the Digital Media in Education module that is already compulsory for students of our Teacher Education programmes, designing, testing, and evaluating innovative digital teaching and learning concepts in seven subject-specific sub-projects and further expanding the virtual Innovation Space, an interdisciplinary teaching and learning environment, where students, teachers and early-stage researchers can exchange ideas. This is where the concepts developed in the sub-projects are turned into didactic design models. These are then made available to other higher education institutions, teacher training colleges, and schools. The three-and-a-half-year higher education development project allows students of Teacher Education programmes at the University of Education Karlsruhe to enhance and strengthen their digitalisation-related skills.