Digital Tools for Teaching, Learning and Exams
Review of Day of Teaching 2020
The 9th Day of Teaching of the St. Pölten UAS had international experts exchange views and experience concerning the further development of hybrid teaching and learning, and discuss current challenges. This year, the event took place as an online conference with more than 120 participants.
The Day of Teaching is an annual conference and further training event on didactics in higher education held at the St. Pölten UAS which addresses innovative teaching, learning and exams. The current possibilities and challenges of digital teaching and learning were this year’s dominant topic.
“Due to the coronavirus, a global experimenting lab under real conditions has been created that deals with teaching, learning and exams using digital tools. The task now is to systematically share the experiences gained on this broad basis and to analyse whether they are just as feasible outside crisis mode. The 9th edition of our Day of Teaching succeeded in making inspiring contributions to this purpose”, emphasises Josef Weißenböck, Head of the Service and Competence Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning (SKILL) at the St. Pölten UAS.
Innovation Requires Awareness
Antonia Scholkmann from Aalborg University in Denmark held the keynote speech on the topic “Innovation in crisis mode? How COVID-19 can (but need not necessarily) improve teaching at universities, and what teachers and university leaders can do to support this”.
“It was and is a great accomplishment to maintain good quality of teaching in the present circumstances. These experiences are not automatically translated into a permanent development – innovation requires awareness, clever processes and the integration of everyone involved in teaching”, said Antonia Scholkmann. She also emphasised the great importance of university didactics and of associated service units at the universities that are well-endowed in terms of personnel and funds.
Building on the Findings of the Past Months
The event continued with intensive work in various formats: presentations, a discourse workshop, an innovation dialogue, an online stations event in the DisQSpace, a session on planning games, and a workshop on the use of digital tools in foreign language teaching.
One highlight was a panel activity in the form of an online future workshop: based on an analysis of the status quo, the participants developed various ideas for the near future, using elements such as drawings, body images, and tweets from the future. The aim was to emphasise the importance of intensive collaboration between teaching staff within the university – but also of cooperation beyond state borders. Furthermore, concepts to integrate the students even more strongly in the planning and implementation of teaching are to gain in importance – and so diverse and dialogue-oriented teaching.
