Project team
e-teaching.org
Duration
January 2011 - December 2013
Funding
Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts Baden-Wuerttemberg; Ministry for Innovation, Science and Research of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia; Ministry of Higher Education, Research and the Arts Hesse
Website
Description
The portal www.e-teaching.org offers comprehensive information on didactical, technological, and organizational aspects of e-learning at universities. It specifically targets university lecturers in German speaking areas who want to integrate digital media into their teaching. Since its launch in 2003, it has become a well-established information resource comprising approximately 1,000 web pages, an extensive glossary, and diverse multimedia supplements.
To establish a broad and sustainable use of new media, appropriate concepts of teacher training and structures of consulting and support have to be established.
The aim of the project e-teaching.org is to foster the use of new media in higher education by providing regularly updated contents on didactical, technological, and organizational aspects of e-learning as well as user-oriented community features. The contents are suitable for users with different levels of knowledge and skills in the field of ICT. The portal is conceptualized for self-navigated learning of individual teachers as well as for hybrid qualification concepts which combine the portal with advisory services.
Partner concept
To launch the portal as a qualification tool in universities it has to be accepted by e-teaching counselors as an everyday working tool. For that reason e-teaching.org has established a cooperation network with local e-learning support teams at several universities. Partner institutions have the possibility to present their e-learning activities within the portal. A community area was launched in 2006 to support communication and cooperation within the German speaking e-learning community. Members can announce their expertise and interests on a virtual business card. Several networking features facilitate location of and contact to other members. Live events like chats with e-learning experts, webcasts and online training sessions take place regularly.
Project structure
The construction of the portal devolved roughly through two phases: a pilot phase and a consolidation phase. First, during a two-year pilot phase (2003–04) supported by the Bertelsmann and Nixdorf Foundation, a prototype of the portal was developed and tested at two universities. A major accomplishment during this time was the implementation of specific functions that allow cooperating universities to generate a localized version of the portal. The main emphasis in the consolidation phase (2005-06) was on the development of a sustainable maintenance model that can support the creation of a broader e-teaching community. An additional aim in this phase was to motivate users to visit the portal regularly by providing not only an information pool but also communication tools for professional collaboration. In this period, the Federal Ministry for Education and Research provided the support for the development and distribution of the portal. From 2007 to 2010, the portal was financed by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Part of the project is the development of a local e-learning portal for the region of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Since 2011, the portal has been funded by the states of Baden-Wuerttemberg, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Hesse.
Cooperations
Partner Universities and Academic Associations: http://www.e-teaching.org/news/portalinformationen/unsere_partner/
Publications
- Haug, S., & Kohls, C. (2008). Syndication of e-learning content. In M. B. Nunes, P. Isaías, & D. Ifentaler (Eds.). Proceedings of the IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet (pp. 423-425). Freiburg: IADIS Press.
- Gaiser, B., Reinhardt, J., Wedekind, J., & Panke, S. (2004). Web educational portal "e-teaching.org" - Counseling infrastructure for academic teachers. In L. Cantoni & C. McLoughlin (Eds.), Proceedings of ED-MEDIA 2004, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications (pp. 403-408) [CD-ROM].
- Reinhardt, J., Friedrich, H. F., Wedekind, J., Gaiser, B., & Panke, S. (2004). e-teaching.org: Qualifying academic teachers for the next decade. A pragmatic approach. In J. Cook (Ed.), Blue skies and pragmatism: Learning technologies for the next decade. Research Proceedings of the 11th Association for Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C 2004) (pp. 36-53). Devon, UK: University of Exeter.