Forschung

Project description

An international cooperation partnership within the framework of the Erasmus+ funding line of the European Union

Visit our project website and register for our newsletter: DigiLLM

Duration
September 2022 - August 2025

International consortium
Bielefeld University (coordinating department)
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Dalarna University, Sweden
University of Ostrava, Czech Republic

Prof.in Dr Michaela Vogt & Marlene Pieper, M.A. (Bielefeld University)
Prof. Dr Katja Andersen (University of Luxembourg)
Prof.in Anette Bagger, Ph.D. (Dalarna University)
Ass. Prof. Zuzana Sikorová, Ph.D. (University of Ostrava)

Funding
The project is a Cooperation Partnership co-funded with €400,000 under the Erasmus+ funding line, Key Action 2 (Cooperation among organisations and institutions) of the European Union.

Project description

Initial situation
Open Educational Resources (OER) are of particular importance in the context of education under the conditions of digitality. This refers to educational materials that are published under an open licence and are therefore freely accessible and usable, shareable and modifiable. They are thus recognised as having an inherent potential to promote inclusive education.

However, inclusion and inclusion sensitivity in teaching and learning settings is not limited to the approval and adaptability of materials. At the same time, there is a lack of quality criteria for inclusion-sensitive digital educational materials in general and OER in particular. There is also a lack of information on how teachers can modify and adapt digital materials in order to make Lehren und Lernen [Centre for teaching and learning] inclusion-sensitive. If OER are contextualised with inclusive education, this connection is characterised by a lack of clarity and research desiderata.

Objectives
The aim of the DigiLLM project is to establish, expand and internationally anchor this discourse on inclusion sensitivity in the context of OER. This is done by establishing a comprehensive digital ecosystem:

A digital portal has been departmentalised to become the central point of contact on the topic of "inclusion and OER", offering teachers, student teachers, learners and researchers a space to critically engage with digital educational materials and OER.

Initial explorative analyses of various OER platforms from all project countries and an international literature review will be made available. Interviews and group discussions are used to capture the perspectives of teaching staff, instructors, lecturers and learners on OER and their sensitivity to inclusion.

Based on this initial research, a Framework for Reflection on Living Learning Materials (FRoLLM) was developed to reflect on inclusion-sensitive learning materials and open educational resources. It forms the basis for a training module for teachers and student teachers. These results will be made available open access.

By setting up an openly accessible, interactive rating function on the digital portal, teachers, students, school pupils and parents will be able to evaluate existing OER according to the newly developed criteria. This invites a broad public to enter into a critical discourse on the topic of inclusion sensitivity in OER. Student teachers are also particularly encouraged to use these tools and digital spaces to reflect on the connection between inclusion sensitivity and learning materials. (This part of the portal is currently under construction).

This participatory part in turn flows back into the academic discourse in that the assessments and reviews designed by teaching staff, instructors, lecturers and students become the basis for meta-reviews from a researcher's perspective. These meta-reviews will be published in a newly founded peer-reviewed journal, thereby stabilising the discourse on inclusion sensitivity in OER at an international level.

Contact: marlene.pieper@uni-bielefeld.de