Teaching and learning with the aid of digital tools and devices is playing an increasingly important role in everyday life at universities. The international project IGNITION aims to investigate the requirements and conditions of digital teaching specifically at universities of applied sciences and to gain practical insights for the development of digital competences in teaching. As part of the international joint project IGNITION, the conference "Digital Literacy" took place at Hochschule Bremen (HSB) at the end of May 2023.
"The aim of IGNITION is to give our teachers concrete didactic tools and technological support to enable curricular teaching especially in international and hybrid settings," says project leader Professor Andreas Teufel of Faculty 4 – School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. "This will not replace our core competence, namely teaching in small groups and on application-oriented tasks in the seminar room and skills labs, but it will considerably expand our possibilities."
During the conference, the project partners presented their interim results and reported on the progress of their work to around 40 international guests. In addition to technical insights into the area of digitalisation at universities, for example by HSB' Vice-President for Digitalisation, Dr. Sabina Schoefer, a workshop held on the second day of the event offered the opportunity for participants to literally come to grips with the topic and test their own digital skills.
IGNITION is a research project launched by the STARS EU partners Hanze Groningen (Netherlands, lead), Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (Portugal) and Hochschule Bremen (HSB) together with South East Technological University (SETU) in Waterford (Ireland). Funded with 385,000 euros from the Erasmus programme Cooperation partnerships in higher education, the project team has three years to implement the future-oriented agenda. The acronym IGNITION stands for European DIGital Literacy Coalition for Inclusion, Collaboration aNd InnovaTION.
The IGNITION project will run until 2025. In the next step, the project team wants to build a "community of practice" with teachers who want to experiment with digital formats at international level. "I would like to invite all teachers interested in the topic to contact me directly," says Andreas Teufel. "There are still several online conferences to come – the next one in November 2023. And in the summer semester of 2024, we will hold a series of events in Portugal."
HSB has been involved in STARS EU – previously ENGAGED – since the end of 2019. The alliance combines the strengths of nine long-established European universities with complementary strengths. Together they want to implement an innovative concept in higher education – with the aim of creating a new kind of European university. Many teachers and students are already involved in the network, and more are always welcome.
The IGNIOTION project team at HSB with project leader Professor Andreas Teufel (2nd row, 4th from left).
© HSB-Louisa Windbrake
